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[Orange Wizard]

Statues in Dwarf Fortress seem to be the classic greco-roman design. They're big, heavy and cumbersome. It doesn't make sense for a trader to drag these things from their homelands when they can just trade in regular trade goods like figurines.

Statues should have to be a custom order from an artist of that region. Custom made statues from other lands should be expensive to both make and import but they should be quite favourable among your population.

This is Dwarf Fortress. We don't need logic here.

I hate when people say that.
The game's still in alpha, guys. Anything you cite is probably a bug or underimplemented feature.

I hate it when people say that. We can't use 'the game is in alpha' as an excuse for much of the game's nonsense. Like Urist being a popular name: no self-respecting dwarf would name their kid 'dagger'. Or the ability to walk through tiles diagonally, or being able to fit 300 dwarves, 250 animals, a dragon and a partridge in a pear tree on two 3x3x3 metre tiles. The pear tree would need its own tile.
My initial statement was... irrelevant. So was this, I suppose.

Alpha means it's incomplete. Don't expect perfection in alpha. Most games are working on making it impossible to walk through walls and the like at this stage of development.

no self-respecting dwarf would name their kid 'dagger'.

No self-respecting Spanish person would name their little girl 'pillar'. Except they do. Because that's called culture.

The Spanish would have some reason for doing so, that would be in their culture. My point is that dwarf-culture (although nigh-on indistinguishable from much of the Bay12 culture) is more accommodating to names like 'Axe', 'Hammer', or 'Magmacarp the Elf-Slaughter of Death'...
Not 'dagger'.

Daggers are weapons, and "Urist" is actually a fairly uncommon name in-game. Like Bob; everyone knows it's common from fiction, but I can't think of anyone I actually know named Bob.
And, again, alpha. Once Toady has the physics quirks worked out, he'll give each culture a procedurally generated list of common names, some selected from the list of words and some not; until then, don't accept it as the final word.

Daggers aren't weapons that dwarves can make (as far is fort mode/worldgen is concerned). And are you sure they're fairly uncommon? Because in many of my fortresses, Urist, Tekkud, Bėmbul and Cog are far more common that any other name.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Daggers aren't weapons that dwarves can make (as far is fort mode/worldgen is concerned). And are you sure they're fairly uncommon? Because in many of my fortresses, Urist, Tekkud, Bėmbul and Cog are far more common that any other name.

You can't deny that daggers are, in fact, weapons.
I've only seen a handful of Jurists in all of my fortresses, so it's fair to say that it's not all that common. Besides, there's selection bias in place here, too. You remember memorable names, and because Urist is "the" dwarven name, it's more memorable than Dodok or whatever.

[Orange Wizard]

Daggers aren't weapons that dwarves can make (as far is fort mode/worldgen is concerned). And are you sure they're fairly uncommon? Because in many of my fortresses, Urist, Tekkud, Bėmbul and Cog are far more common that any other name.

You can't deny that daggers are, in fact, weapons.
I've only seen a handful of Urists in all of my fortresses, so it's fair to say that it's not all that common. Besides, there's selection bias in place here, too. You remember memorable names, and because Urist is "the" dwarven name, it's more memorable than Dodok or whatever.

Although we mush remember that the RNG is, in fact, random, and it's entirely possible for one fort to have more Urists than another, I think you've got a point. My memory is pretty shoddy.
Now, can we wrap up with the derailed derail?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Daggers aren't weapons that dwarves can make (as far is fort mode/worldgen is concerned). And are you sure they're fairly uncommon? Because in many of my fortresses, Urist, Tekkud, Bėmbul and Cog are far more common that any other name.

You can't deny that daggers are, in fact, weapons.
I've only seen a handful of Urists in all of my fortresses, so it's fair to say that it's not all that common. Besides, there's selection bias in place here, too. You remember memorable names, and because Urist is "the" dwarven name, it's more memorable than Dodok or whatever.

Although we mush remember that the RNG is, in fact, random, and it's entirely possible for one fort to have more Urists than another, I think you've got a point. My memory is pretty shoddy.
Now, can we wrap up with the derailed derail?

Sure!

Um...Oh, right, statues,
Wait until there's a difference between elven, dwarven, human, etc, craftsmanship.

[knutor]

That was a simple concession.  Don't concede so easily, GreatWyrmGold.  Show some backbone!  Here I will lend you some of my Totems.

Urist shows up more commonly based on the available population sizes, civilization numbers, and successful breeding, all of which can be set during worldgen.  Less savagery can and does increase breeding.  However, Daggers, themselves, being found cannot be preset during worldgen themselves directly, without removing Kobolds, via their caves. 

It is also quite possible, that a larger world, 256, lets say.  A 256 world might just have a larger population and thus have a decidedly larger chance of a densely packed mountainhome of migrants with Urist for their firstnames. Unlike the chances of daggers showing up. 

This said.  It would also be conditionally less likely for daggers to appear having the closest neighboring neighbor not be a dagger wielding race.  But with that being said, not so often enough, it is also likely that if Elfs were enemies, that they could infact, quite possibly forge a wooden dagger, could they not, should one want to?  While quite unlikely and to my knowledge, unavoidable, it could be said that this would possibly occur, possibly in concurrence with another parallel occurring event.

With these variables in mind, the likely hood of one being more random than the other could be swayed, but may not be swayed to prove a more fruitful if desired result; yielding higher chances of daggers and Urists for a specifically prescribed embark choice, seeds being what they may.

[Orange Wizard]

But the existence of daggers as weapons is unrelated to the likelihood of dwarves being named Urist.
Also, I don't think that elves have daggers 'enabled' in the raws. But I see your point.

[GreatWyrmGold]

But the existence of daggers as weapons is unrelated to the likelihood of dwarves being named Urist.
Also, I don't think that elves have daggers 'enabled' in the raws. But I see your point.

Dwarves still know what daggers are, though. They just don't see any reason to make a dagger when they could make a sword.

[knutor]

A large dagger, while in itself made to be a dagger, could be, by someone other than the crafter labeling it a dagger, could be, very easily referred to as a short sword, by species of the same size, simply on the basis of observation and cultural edifices.  The cultural edifices include and exclude dwarfs named Urist.  While nondwarf cultural edifices, those of an Elf, Goblin, Human and Kobold nature, tend not to refer to the short metal weaponsmithed instrument, as short, but large or missing.  A twist of fate?  Or could entities with the potential of Urist first names, find shortness appealing as opposed to largeness.