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[Yoink]

Yeah, pretty much any name has some kind of meaning to it. Simply mashing syllables together (or putting on your Fantasy Character Creation cap) for your child's name would probably get you run out of town for child abuse, haha.   
Kinda weird when you think about it. All the names we consider normal actually MEAN things. Crazy.   

[Enemy post]

It gets particularly interesting if you learn German and start seeing all the random words people have for last names. Stark=Strong, for instance, so Iron Man's name is Tony Strong.

[Maximum Spin]

Yeah, pretty much any name has some kind of meaning to it. Simply mashing syllables together (or putting on your Fantasy Character Creation cap) for your child's name would probably get you run out of town for child abuse, haha.   
Kinda weird when you think about it. All the names we consider normal actually MEAN things. Crazy.   

There are cultures where mashing syllables together is normal.

[Yoink]

I mean, do the syllables have meanings individually, though?   
If not, that's pretty cool. Well, it's pretty cool either way, but if they don't mean anything that's badass.   

[Reelya]

Yeah, pretty much any name has some kind of meaning to it. Simply mashing syllables together (or putting on your Fantasy Character Creation cap) for your child's name would probably get you run out of town for child abuse, haha.   
Kinda weird when you think about it. All the names we consider normal actually MEAN things. Crazy.   

There are cultures where mashing syllables together is normal.

We all mash syllables together. People confuse language for rules of writing about where spaces go on paper. Germans don't 'really' cram a ton of words together into one big word any more than English does by using adjectives.

[Maximum Spin]

I mean, do the syllables have meanings individually, though?   
If not, that's pretty cool. Well, it's pretty cool either way, but if they don't mean anything that's badass.   

Nope, the goal appears to be entirely about making a name that sounds good by cultural standards without meaning anything.

We all mash syllables together. People confuse language for rules of writing about where spaces go on paper. Germans don't 'really' cram a ton of words together into one big word any more than English does by using adjectives.

I mean arbitrarily, to make new names. I thought that was obvious from context.

[Egan_BW]

Giving every person in your society their very own word which is reserved to refer to only them without other meaning would seem to be the most efficient way. Though on the other hand, letting names mean something lends them a certain kind of power.

[Reelya]

If everyone on Earth had a unique first name I don't think that would improve 'efficiency' very much. If all combinations of 26 letters were valid then 26^7 = 8 billion so everyone would have a 7-letter name, but of course most of those will be gibberish so if they're used as actual names they'd have to be longer.

Or we keep it to 7 letters and everyone pronounces them as letters. So if your name is Ahtorsi you pronounce it "Ayhaitchteeoharesseye" so people can tell you from Aatorsi or Artorsi. And I'm not even getting into the difficult to pronounce 7-letter names.

If somone is called David there can be occasional problems clarifying which David you're referring to, but would that really be worse than having to spell your name every time you interact with anyone?

[Egan_BW]

I said "a society", not "the entire human population of the planet".

[Reelya]

Knocking that down to the size of the USA for example really only knocks one letter off the required name length. (26^6 = 300 million)

So everyone gets a 7-letter name and everyone in the USA gets a name that starts with an 'A' to keep things simple.

[Maximum Spin]

To be fair, the USA is already fifty different countries and most of those also contain many wildly different societies. "Everyone in this town gets a unique name" is probably adequate. Of course, then it would be trivial to assign prefixes to each state, county, and town.

But then, every name can also be interpreted as a number in base 26, so you're really just assigning everyone a number with a built-in locating system. Maybe then we could have these little pocket-sized devices where you can enter a person's unique number to immediately be connected to that person's device for communication purposes, and we can call them "cell phones".

[scriver]

That's why you have surnames. So you can tell which Raven you refer too, Raven Eagle's son or Raven Cauldron's son.

[Yoink]

Bushwacking the psycho shopkeepers in Spelunky is actually a heroic act. Change my mind.   

[scriver]

If your not whacking them in the bush you're just whacking them with a bush

[methylatedspirit]

To be able to function socially, one must make assumptions about the people around them. People don't think of strangers as blank slates; they must use what limited information is available to them to fill in that blank slate. While that can lead to racism (and other forms of discrimination), I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to assume things about people as long as one updates their assumptions as they get to know someone, and doesn't try to make blanket statements about groups of people.

They're guidelines, models. Every model is wrong, but some models are useful. If the person contradicts the model, the model is wrong, not the person. It has failed to make correct predictions, and it should be adjusted or replaced. Assuming that the model is the person is dangerous, and I think it would lead quite easily to discriminatory behavior.

(Or I could be talking BS, and everything I just said is invalid. The stuff that comes out of my mind/ass/mind-ass isn't particularly well-vetted.)