Torsten answered this question perfectly for the definition of real/complex/quaternionic in John's original question.  But this usage of real/complex/quaternionic is foreign to my experience. Specifically, if you look at an irreducible real representation of a group, then its endomorphism ring is (by Schur and Frobenius) R, C, or H.  And this seems to give a natural meaning of the terms "real", "complex" and "quaternionic" for irreps.  This definition does not agree with John's, as you can see by considering the spin reps of Spin(7,1).

My definition is also what you find in Noah Snyder's answer [here][1] and in Wikipedia's definition of quaternionic representation.


  [1]: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/17495/what-rings-groups-have-interesting-quaternionic-representations