Our friends over at SWTORLife have an awesome article up on the naming rules of Star Wars: The Old Republic written by Daelda.

Many of us are rolling our real characters in SWTOR today and it may be an excellent time to bone up on which names are acceptable in the game. Additionally some of you, like me, are either RPers or you roll on Role-Play servers and were disappointed to hear that BioWare would not enforce RP server rules. A large part of that disappointment stemmed from the wish to avoid playing alongside silly character names like DarthDumbo or HungSolo.

Daelda went over the Rules of Conduct with a fine toothed comb and found us some very good news indeed.

We were told to comb the desert so we're combing it! - Spaceballs The Movie

“EA/BioWare has published their Rules of Conduct: — Very important and useful documents that most players skip over in their excitement to get into the game.

Most of the rules are pretty common among MMOs, and if you are a veteran MMO player, you won’t blink twice at them. However, a few of the items are a little different than you may be used to, and are worth looking at a little closer, so that you don’t run afoul of any of the rules once Early Access (and Launch) hits and you find yourself actually playing the game.

One of these items that deserves a closer look is the Naming Policy. Now, we have known for a while that BioWare isn’t going to enforce Role-Playing Naming, even on RP Servers. To many RPers that was a disappointing decision, but those names can be subjective at times, so I can understand their stance. But, what rules ARE they going to enforce? Well, if you read the Rules of Conduct, and make your way down to Section D, you will find out. It reads as follows:

Naming Policy:

When creating a character or guild name for Star Wars: The Old Republic, it is encouraged that you select a name that reflects the theme of the game. The guidelines listed below outline the types of names that you can NOT use, and apply to both player or character names, as well as guild names.

You may not use any names that violate the General Rules. This includes the use of names that are hateful, defamatory, racist, ethnically offensive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, or any other language that is offensive in nature.

You may not use names that are harassing or defamatory to other players or employees of EA, BioWare or LucasArts, e.g. EASUX, Timsretarded, and Biowaresux.

You may not use names of any EA, BioWare, or LucasArts employee or service related to Star Wars: The Old Republic.

You may not use names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials or products, e.g. Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper.

You may not use names from popular culture or media, e.g. Lady Gaga or George Lucas.

You may not use names that are religiously or historically significant, e.g. Jesus, Winston Churchill.

You may not use proper names of areas within Star Wars for character names. Guild names, however, MAY use the proper names of specific areas to help promote role-playing and realm pride, e.g. Defenders of Tython or Protectors of Hutta.

You may not use proper names of non-player characters within Star Wars: The Old Republic, e.g. Darth Malgus, Satele Shan, Yoda, Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker.

You may not use names containing titles or ranks within them, e.g. General Supertrooper, Captain Tim, Darth Timmy, Knight Wakey.

You may not use names that refer to drugs or that are drug related.

You may not use names that contain an inappropriate phrase, sentence or any fragment of a sentence or Leet speak, e.g. uberhaxer, xxspeederxx, lolface, rofl, Noobwhacker, TimmyF**k, kock, fuk.

You may not use misspellings or alternative spellings of names that violate any of the above rules, e.g. Hamsolo, Yooda, DorthVader.

You may not use gibberish names when creating character, e.g. ajsdu, rifndsw, qweszs.’

So, as December 13th approaches, remember these rules as you think up the names of your characters. Oh, and anyone planning to play SanHolo, Vaadar, DaarthMall, LukSkyywlkr or any variation thereof…you better have a backup name planned.”

- Daelda for SWTOR LIFE

Thank you Daelda and Serge for letting me share this post with our readers here at TORWars, who I sincerely hope will take the time after enjoying this article to visit one of the truly great and old (in a good way!) sites of our community: SWTOR LIFE.