I don’t watch TV. Not in a smart guy way, more of a “I have 200 hours of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous logged on Steam” kind of way. Still, despite such a cultural diet, even I know about Love is Blind, the Netflix show where emotionally unwell people agree to get married before they’ve even met. It turns out love may be blind because it’s afflicted with scarlet rot.
As reported by Huffpost, on a recent episode contestant Zack Goytowski decided to run some curious baby names by his shotgun bride, Irina Solomonova: “What about Godfrey,” he proffered, with Solomonova simply responding, “Ew.” While she was nonplussed at the name of the First Elden Lord, maybe Goytowski would have had better luck with “Hoarah,” as in, “Hoarah Loux, Warrior, Chieftain of the Badlands and Alter Ego to Godfrey.”
Undeterred, Goytowski then hits her with “Godrick,” referring to the first Great Rune holder most players are likely to encounter, a mythic coward who rides around in a mech suit crafted out of the still-living flesh of immortal Tarnished. Even without this crucial context, Solomonova again demurs.
Now, to be fair to Goytowski, Solomonova doesn’t have significantly better suggestions, wanting to name the hypothetical son “Zion” or “Gideon,” dooming the child to a life as a gun-toting frontier preacher thirsty for justice (or something like that). Jury’s still out on more traditionally feminine names, but might I suggest “Great Wyrm Theodorix.”
Quite frankly, I’m just tickled at how little things really change when it comes to pop culture baby names. It’s always immediately obvious as a bad idea, and yet we press on. The Sephiroths and Britneys of the 2000s gave way to The Great Khaleesi Wave of the 2010s, and now here we are: contemplating some Elden Ring Bosses to go with all those “gh” and “x”-heavy names you see on TikTok. Quite frankly, we’re gonna need some Miquellas, Malikeths, and even Ekzykeses to break up all the Breighlynns and Jeighlynns coming down the pike. Expectant parents, rest easy, you have over 107 options to choose from.