Lists of names & replay value?

Has anyone who's played in multiple AW games found that the lists of names become problematic? They strike me as a fantastic tool for MCs and players, but it also strikes me that any given name could carry baggage from one game to the next. Especially NPC names; if the MC is looking at NPCs through crosshairs, those names will get burned through pretty quickly.

I guess specifically I'm wondering: do any of find your group saying things like "Tum-Tum again, huh, guess we know who the villain is" or "no, wait, Joe's Girl was the dangerous cultie goth chick in our last game, she's the door girl at Dremmer's in this one."

If you have experienced that, what have you done? Just run with it? Made up new names? A little of both?  Has it detracted from the "replay value" of the game?

It hasn't been an issue.

Sometimes Balls is a dick; other times he's a lady.

Hasn't been an issue.

Added: Wait, do you think the GM is required to use that one NPC name list every time, or something? No, no, no. That's just a bunch of pitch-perfect names to get you started, provided to you free of charge with the game. Add your own. Use other lists. Or, hell, use those over and over if it's working. Whatever.

Sometimes Balls is a dick; other times he's a lady.

Balls is always a dick, even when he's a lady.

But seriously, the "baggage" has always been sort of fun in my experience. When we notice it at all.

I've lost track of how many games I've played. Name duplication has never been a problem. As a player, sometimes there's an NPC with the same name, but it's a totally different NPC. As an MC, I mostly pull from the lists, but sometimes I pull in new names that are setting appropriate - in our current Appalachian mines and mountain-top removal game, I have NPCs named Peterbuilt and Massey because I like the idea of brands and companies becoming personal names.

We're on our second game, and I get a kick out of the re-used names.

Princey, the funny-looking kid who runs errands/self-impressed dancer-whore

Kettle, the desperate old mud-fisher/the guard who's an easy mark for a Skinner

Wisher, leader of the hill-mutants/over-eager wanna-be Savvyhead

It's not exactly an issue and it's also kind of fun.  But I'm playing in 2.5 PBP games, MCing another and MCing a face to face game.  I made up a new list of names just to spread things out a bit:


4Square, Abraham, Albatross, All You Can Eat, Ambies, Andrei, Basil, Batman, Beam, Bear, Bonsai, Booker, Bowling Ball, Cantina, Chicken, Christmas, Chrome, Clarice, Clove, Cola, Cottontop, Diaper Genie, Digby, Doodad, Dumpster, Dynomite, Eager Beaver, Eclipse, Eel, Ellis, Ember, Exit Wound, Father, Fink, Floyd, Fort, Gone South, Grid Beam, Gung Ho, Gunship, Hammer, Hazel, Hot Cakes, Hubert, Hut, Incubus, Indigo, Ipso Facto, Ivan, Jellybean, Joy Ride, Jubjub Bird, Jupiter, Kangaroo, Key, Kill Switch, King, Kon-Tiki, Limbo, Lincoln, Lionheart, Lofty, Lolly Pop, Longjohn, Manhattan, Mary Lou, Mary-go-Round, Meta, Miss Daisy, Missy, Mona, Napoleon, Nick, Noah, North, Nosferatu, Notch, Old Lady, Otto, Oxford, Ozzy, Pecker, Pencil, Penny, Pepper, Pet Rock, Plank, Pop, Popeye, Porky, Possum, Power Strip, Purple, Queen Bee, Quicksilver, Raggedy Ann, Raven, Rebbel Yell, Red, Reginald, Ringo, Robot, Rockwell, Runway, Salvador, Sammich, Shaw, Sid, Slug, Snowball, Snyder, Softball, Sookie, Spelunky, Spike, Staple, Star, Star Wars, Stock, Storm, Thane, The Bomb, Tina, Tiny, Toady, Tooth, Tootie, Trudy, Twinkie, Umlaut, Uncle Tom, Vagabond, Venus, Wallace, Word, X, Yankee Doodle, Yellowstone, Zara, Zulu

Love that name list! I want Mary-go-round to show up in my game now.

Mary-go-round and her faithful companion, Diaper Genie.

For the game set near and around Hoover Dam, I wrote down the name for all of the counties and cities in Nevada and used truncated and messed up versions of those for names.

I like the idea of brands and companies becoming personal names.

The last game I ran was set in a global urban sprawl; I would walk around downtown during my lunch break and note the writing on street signs, billboards, and businesses, and then I'd (sometimes) drop a letter or two from the beginning or end of the words. That became my supplemental name list.