Finally Got WOFF

[Sailor Steve]

And then something really awesome happened, all by itself:

It's not enough for me to just make up a pilot. I want real names, so I came up with a generator using dice and websites dedicated to names - British, French, German - first, last and middle, and to generate city names as well. And that's where it got weird.

My first pilot is French. I rolled a 14 for the first name, so it starts with 'N'. A further roll came up with 'Noel'. I rolled for a middle name, and he has one. Being French, he might have a few more, so I rolled for that. Nope, only one. The next roll was a 15, so it begins with 'O'. The only 'O' I could find on the list I had was 'Odil'. For the last name it came up 11, which is 'K'. The only French last names beginning with 'K' on the list I had were 'Kay' and 'Kirouac'. A further roll said his full name is Noel Odil Kay. Unusual, but there it is. Except it gets even weirder.

For the city I rolled an 9, which is 'I'. I could find exactly zero French cities beginning with 'I'. Well, except for "Irish Nantes". That's a nickname, and it came about apparently because Nantes was founded by Irish smugglers as a base from which to sneak things into England. And it turns out that 'Kay' is a Celtic name. One source says it's related to MacKay and McKay, but it's also the name of King Arthur's foster brother and Chamberlain, Sir Kay, or Sir Kai in the earlier versions.

So there you have it. Noel Kay's surname comes about because he's descended from the Irish smugglers who founded Nantes. And that's the weirdness. I didn't come up with that origin and then make up the names, I rolled up the names and the story is a logical explanation for something that actually had nothing to do with me at all. Like I said at the beginning, "all by itself".