Having played with this character, the name did not register as the equipment brand for some time. In this case, I personally think that the connection is weakly there, though most miss/glance over the connection due to the setting of the game.
Just my personal take on it, however.
I grew up in Illinois. Dad owned one of the smaller ones. I wouldn’t bat and eye to the naming
Also to expand on that howmanyofme.com reference awhile back
John dear: 74
John Deer: 54
John Deere: 34
Not included are the "Jon"s and "Jonathan"a
yeah, I would say this is a silly report as well.
I mean, first off, the spelling is different. At least different enough for me to just not notice it, despite knowing of the company.
I think the naming policy should only apply if It was meant to be a direct reference. A name being similar to a company, while also being a sorta common name, really shouldn’t raise any eyebrows IMO.
If the name ends up being an issue, at least there’s an easy fix:
Jon Dear → Jon Dare.
“Turns out it took a took a year for NT HR to finally process my paperwork to fix my name in their system!”
Well, I’m going to give it another day for @GameAdmin to state their opinions. So far it looks like we might just be defaulting to Ruko’s clear stance.
I think the name is fine. Anything can be a reference to anything if you reach hard enough. Just because a guy lives next to a bottling plant, I wouldn’t accept a report on John smith.
While this COULD be seen as a reference name, frankly it feels dumb to chatise as mentioned previously anything could be a name brand if you push hard enough. Like I had a character named Jameson, his first name could literally have been in reference to the irish whiskey which was made by a scotsman, which is currently owned by a french company but it wasn’t meant to be.
Franklin Covey sounds like a name yeah? FranklinCovey is the name of a company. Basically we’re shooting in the dark with this sort of thing, while ‘John Dear’ sounds like a reference to the tractor company, it’s shown to stand on its own 2 legs as a name. Hell, John Deere was a name itself, the name of the person that made the company!
Alright, here’s what I’m gonna say (because this is hell and I want it to end). Based on feedback from other admins I’m inclined to agree, if you start stretching hard enough you’ll find a reference for most common, or common-like names. I’m not going to hang people for phonetically sounding like a brand name unless the headmins tell me to.
Obviously rediculous references like “Hugh Man” are still not permitted, but I’m not going to be the one to die on this specific bridge unless ordered to.
Non-obvious phonetically similar references (major differences in spelling, but sounds the same) to brand names for common-ish names are fine. Blatantly stretching this ruling will still be disallowed.