Intestine TumblingSpider. Head LaptopCable. Nose LongPick. You see my point? They are just bunches of words jumbled together. Gibberish, in an another word. Names are string tokens for the human player to recognize his units. The larger the scope the game, the easier it should be to remember and recognize individual characters. In that regard, DF's naming scheme is a total failure. Names should just be enough for identification i.e. people instinctively refer to me as just "rep" or "reph" because that's enough to identify most of the time. Attempting to list lengthy names would typically result in slower reading speed and strain on the brain because it'd take longer to grasp all the scope of the collection.
Kyler Van den
Archer of/from the Mountain
No offense to any Kyler Jansens, but according to rephikul, the naming scheme picked for them is an epic failure.
I think that picking three words for each child, a use word and a idenfyer word combo, is a quaint dwarven custom, but I see nothing inherently wrong with it. Names like Johnson aren't really any better of a custom, although it becomes easier to track lineage, since clearly that person was from someone who was John's Son when their cultural way of thinking was overcome by the modern one.
Much better than all the poor carters, bakers, and Smiths of the world, who were forever labeled by job title.
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Topic: What's in a name? (Read 2081 times)