Name Generation

[Christopher Weeks]

Hi all,

I imagine that just about all of us have, at one time or another, invented fictitious linguistic trends with varying degrees of success for our games.  We want names to sound foreign in a non-specific way but not like gibberish.  I'm interested in how we do this.

I got to thinking about this because in This thread,

I can't find the name generation program I used to use to mix language sounds

I did some study about a year ago on how people think syllables form words and built a toy in Excel to form words from basic monosyllabic utterances.  You can download it here if you're interested.  It's not an off-the-shelf useful tool for this purpose, but it might be worth playing with and it is completely tunable.

What other tools or processes are there for this kind of thing?  I think this thread will gain value through discussion of how to do this and very similar things -- including critique of approaches and by posting links to linguistic tools that have been valuable (or at least interesting) to you.

Chris

[Zak Arntson]

This web tool is a JavaScript page that implements a crude genetic algorithm to evolve words. Pick (or write in) the words you like, select their checkboxes, and hit "breed". The next group of words will be children (sometimes mutated) of the words you selected.

For example, I want to come up with a name for an ogre that lives in the forest, you could input the words mossy, green, ogre. I get a bunch of nonsense words, but I pick my favorites: moes, mares, ogreych. Breed them again and my new favorites are: morenc, oare, mgrzach, ogeeh. One more generation, and I see moreac. Well, I liked ogreych, so I'll just glue them together. My monster's a moreych.

As for how it works, for anyone who wants to implement it in their own language (or even in a manual game system), in a nutshell:

Each parent word is put into a pool. Then, to create a child, you pick a word length. Then, for each letter of the child word (the nth letter), you pick the nth letter from a random parent word. Sometimes, instead of picking a parent's letter, you just throw in a random letter instead.

[Christopher Weeks]

Thanks, I remember playing with your tool some time back and I meant to do some research on genetic algorithms but never got back to it.  I wonder how it would work to implement such a system that focussed on syllables instead of letters.

Chris

[Andrew Morris]

Chris, great topic! I thought I was the only one who cared about internally consistent names and such. I checked out your exel file and it looks much like systems I've used in the past, but your list of syllables is much more comprehensive.

Anyway, to answer your question, I've used two types of name generation systems -- random and non-random.

The random systems usually break down to identifying a series of similar and/or distinctive syllables, then creating a series of charts with numbers assigned to them. For example, first you'd roll to find the number of syllables and their composition (e.g. Consonant-Vowel-Special-Vowel). Then, you roll to find each syllable on the Consonant, Vowel, and Special charts. Since the selection pool is more limited, this tends to create names that all have a common feel.

The non-random method is just taking a common words and names, then adding, removing, or altering a few letters. This creates a name that registers as somewhat familiar, but distinctly different (e.g. Daved to Daveed, Katherine to Ketrine, Thomas to Tomal, etc.)

So that's what I've done in the past. I've found that random generation is good so you can whip up a name on the spot, and the non-random method is good for major characters. I don't know of any programs or such, but I'm interested in hearing what others have to say on this topic.

[Zak Arntson]

That depends. You could provide a pregenerated syllables, or ask the user to provide their own. The "genetic code" of each word would be which syllables it holds. So if you have:

1. ba
2. na
3. chris
4. to
5. pher
6. zak

And you randomly generate three genetic codes, say between 2 and 5 syllables: 4612, 52, 113. That gives us "tozakbana", "pherna" and "bachris"

If we like numbers 1 and 2, but not "pherna", we can breed those with crossover points. Like this:

Code Select Expand


4-6-1-2     4   1-2
        ==> \ /
1-1-3         1  

See how they line up? Pick random cross over points. The new child in this case is 4112, "tobabana".

Anyhow, with enough parents to sample from and children bred, you can get some pretty interesting word evolution.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I happen to think one of the best ways to go about this is to actually choose a natural language that has the correct (this could, of course, be "no") cultural resonance for your players, and use random words from it.

There are other ways to go about it, though. Different languages arise through many different changes over time - the French words château and castel both descend from the Latin castellum, but in the first case, the word was exposed to more of the systematic changes that the language went through as it was evolving into modern French. Hôtel has the same vowel-s turns into vowel-with-hat in front of t change in it.

As it happens, there are programs bouncing around that will do this kind of systematic manipulation for you, so that if you have a consistent list of words, you can breed new consistent lists of words out of it by setting up different derivation rules. I believe that a rudimentary one is available at http://www.zompist.com, and I've done some things with that program that I suppose I could show.

[b_bankhead]

Here is an online name generator that I have found fun and useful. And it can create things like ideas and quests too

http://www.squid.org/tools/random/index.php

[Bob McNamee]

Some other interesting generators are ...
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/--with both programs, and random word sets from real world and fictional languages

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm-for names taken from US Census data

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index.php -some generic generators including Inn names etc

http://www.geocities.com/roboswami2001/generators--drink namer, computer virus namer, and other specialized name generators

Enjoy,

I like the Squid site a bunch and have used that one several times...like in the Trollbabe-Demigods game.

[M. J. Young]

I do not know how it works, but I've always been impressed with The Everchanging Book of Names http://ebon.uni.cc/ which provides a variety of language choices ranging from Greyhawk and Glorantha to various European to Fae to Pokemon and Star Trek.

--M. J. Young

[greyorm]

If you're interested in making your own internally consistent languages, you're in luck, there's a whole bunch of freaks just like you! Creating internally consistent languages, for name-sounds, name-convention development, or other reasons, is an actual hobby.

Making "model languages" is like making little model ships in bottles, except that the product here can actually be "sailed." You're also in good company: Tolkien did this, with his various forms of elvish, orcish, and a number of other lesser-known languages. Klingon is another well-known example, alongside Esperanto.

I've been involved with this for years, and until about four or five years ago, I didn't even know there was anything like it. Why? I love languages. I can speak English, rusty German, and basic Indonesian. I used to be able to speak basic Ojibwe and some simple Gaelic; and during grade school I could speak basic Latin and some Spanish.

I've even created a few languages myself, from my early and crude attempts at a language based on ancient Greek, but which held to all the language forms of modern English, and a similar attempt at a Dwarven based on German -- both for a novel I was writing during high school -- to more recent attempts that had complete non-English derived grammars, and an internally consistent basic vocabularly developed for a game world a small group of us co-created.

If you're interested in checking out how you go about making a model language, I've got links for you:

Constructed Languages is part of Chris' Pound's Name & Language resources site; it has some nice generators for creating languages and name lists and dialects of your languages.

Langmaker is the site that introduced me to the existance of the hobby. Lots of data about making languages; examination of and links to tons of created languages. They used to have a really simple program that let you generate and mold languages based on simple rules, and populate a basic vocabulary, but it's been retired (Chris Pound maintains a web-based verion of it!).

Language Resources is a Geocities site, so beware their damn browser-stealing ads. Lots of info, and links to other language-making sites.

Model Languages is another site with some information on model languages, and some examples.

The Language Construction Kit is a very nice step-by-step and how-to of creating your own languages.[/list:u]

[Shreyas Sampat]

There is also the Constructed Languages mailing list: http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html

[greyorm]

Crap! Credit where due...I screwed up: the site I mention above is NOT a part of Chris Pound's site, instead, the programs are based on scripts Chris wrote. The site and programs actually belong to JK Hoffman.

[Pagrin]

Hello all
I find translating simple fantasy names into another language does it for me. I had an NPC wizard called Blackstar, which in dutch becomes Svartster.
However be careful as some words in dutch are the same in english. Fallenstar became Fallenster.
Because I picked a language none of my players speak. It comes across as strange but has a flow and consistancy which works for another culture. Largely because it is one.
Pagrin :-)

[Tobias]

And, unfortunately, your translations are incorrect - not that it matters.

Blackstar - Zwartester
Fallenstar - Gevallenster

If you want any more Dutch translations, holler.

(edit: those translations look more scandinavian to me)

[Rob Carriere]

Meandering seriously off topic: Those translations are puzzling. As Tobias already showed, they're not actually Dutch (although close) and I've confirmed that they're not Afrikaans, Norwegian, Swedish or Danish either. And, no, they're not German.  So I guess they really are fantasy names... :-) :-)

More on topic: Dutch is actually a fairly poor choice because it is English's second closest living relative. Gaelic and Icelandic are much further off, and starter books for them are fairly easy to get (not to mention on-line stuff) Of course, for the whole-hog experience, go Mandarin or Arabic...

SR
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