Okay, so I'm really only playing one character right now, but he uses more than one name so fight me.

Now, the alias of "Near" is actually . . . because the character names/designs for Near and Mello got mixed up.

Mello was supposed to be Near because he was always "near but not at the other's level". And Near was supposed to be Mello because he's calm.

So the whole thing wound up being pretty damn ironic.

Near is actually so damn distant.

If you want to twist it around to him having been called that because he's the one nearest to L's level, I guess you could.

Funnily enough, when you look at the "How to Read" stats, Near's intelligence is actually rated higher than L's.

But those stats are hard to take too seriously.

Because of stuff like lazy, lazy Matt getting a 7/10 on initiative, wtf.

According to some sources: His real name, Nate River, is supposed to symbolize how his talents flow from L like a river flows from Canada to Alaska.

Just blame Roger for all name weirdness. This is fine.

Roger probably named Mello just to be ironic.

Anyway. If you go into name meanings, Nate is a short form for Nathanael, which is Biblical Greek meaning "God has given".

Which is kind of interesting if you look at Wammy's House as kind of a cult (which is sadly not an unreasonable interpretation).

L is the god figure, and Near has similar talents and mannerisms, and inherits all of L's resources and eventually his name.

So . . . yeah. In that sense "god has given."

In Syn, when Near is Investigating, he's taken on the regular alias of Nicholas Beckett.

I personally only picked Nicholas because there are very few "N" names that I actually liked, and if I was going to be using one regularly for him, I wanted it to be one of those.

And then later I realize that Nicholas means "victory of the people".

Which is too funny. Just happening to pick up a name that means victory for the guy who was victorious at the end of his canon.

I realize now that Near could easily have known this in-character and did it on purpose.

And "Beckett" . . . well, one definition of the word "beck" is a swift-flowing river. Since his real last name is River, I deliberately went with a water theme.

ventose: Isn't it stupidly perfect? And really, you could see Near doing it on purpose.

Back to the surname, I thought just Beck would be a bit too on the nose, so I used Beckett because -ett is a diminutive suffix and Near is tiny.

(But for him, it's totally just because of the water connection.)

Poor Nick.

And for his StE counterpart . . . well, why change the perfectly normal first name?

He only became Nathan Brooks instead of Nathan River because there had briefly been a Near in game before him, played by someone else, and thus they couldn't have the same.

So . . . Brooks. Again, for the water theme.

And all of Near's Infiltrator names in Syn have started with N or L, and the surname always has some connection to water.