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[Dorsidwarf]

I still think that having one monolithic system, no matter how logical and well thought out, is a very poor idea, and that extensive rawability with widespread differences in names between races and civs is important to help keep the world feeling alive rather than homogenous

[SixOfSpades]

I still think that having one monolithic system, no matter how logical and well thought out, is a very poor idea, and that extensive rawability with widespread differences in names between races and civs is important to help keep the world feeling alive rather than homogenous

I for one am firmly in agreement. Replay value depends heavily on the dwarves themselves being interesting, and a large part of that is derived from cultural differences, so that each fort you play feels significantly different from your previous ones.

It's not one system, well in a way it is  . We have a large number of names, reflecting all different types of important information and we eliminate those that are not culturally relevant.  In some cases, as with family the length of names is controlled by a number of indefinite length.  So if we don't think a civilization would care about a particular piece of information, we leave it out even though the player might want to know it.  We can do this automatically on the basis of values, so a civilization that does not care about [FAMILY] does not bother with surnames at all and the more they care the more generations of family they record.

Variations on a system (especially when the only thing that changes is the magnitude) is still just one system. Please, at least say you'd be open to switching the positions of the names around a bit. For instance, traditional Chinese puts the surname before the given name--and I personally think that makes a lot of sense. It's like biological nomenclature, putting the general words first and getting increasingly more specific: Homo sapiens Honeycutt Barbara. (We already write time as hour:minute:second, now if we could just get people to write year:month:day.)

That is effect an alternative means at carrying out the basic function of my naming, getting rid of old surnames so that they do not pass out context and lose accuracy as regards to family identification for the player.  However your idea depends too much on a situation working out in a particular fashion, for instance it breaks down if a forgotten beast scatters the Bunnyhammers about the place and then a whole series of catastrophes ensures that the population never reaches the magic splitting-point which I presume retires that name and creates two new names.

I get the impression that you believe my plan is "have the RNG procedurally create an all-new first name for every baby (or at least the historically significant ones), which will never be used again." Just in case, let me clarify: I only want the RNG to "grab a first name that is not currently in use, by anyone in the fort, or by anyone outside the fort who shares the baby's family name." So no two dwarves with matching names will ever be alive at the same time. Sure, Legends mode or engravings may still show dwarves with identical names, but that's hardly a big deal since historical records include the date on every entry. If the name you want shows up on events from 400 years ago, chances are it ain't the same dwarf. (Unless it's a vampire, in which case you've got bigger problems to be worrying about.)

In any case, where did the clans come from?  We were never talking about clans, which are more family-site government hybrids to put it in game terms.

I said "clan" because that's shorthand for "group of related individuals who live as a (generally) cohesive unit and share the same name", such as Bunnyhammer. The word 'clan' literally means 'family', that is all that the word formally means, and don't you EVER try to equate it with a form of government again, without some reputable sources to back you up.

A dwarven child snatched off to live as a goblin would probably be given a goblin name (and, as I said, might not ever remember their dwarven one).

That would result in us having two names for the same character, one according to the culture of the first civilization from which the child was stolen and the second according to the second civilization.

And what's so wrong about that? It works for vampires. It works for Eminem. It worked for Gandalf. True, there are times where realism should take a back seat to convenience, but I don't think this is one of them. People taking new names (or having names thrust upon them, willingly or not) tells a more interesting story, and can help add depth to the character.

As a special case we should probably hide their family names (not actually delete) as long as they remain part of a [BABYSNATCHER] civilization, that way if they migrate back into their own civilization (or into any non-babysnatcher one incidentally) their family names will restore, unless they would have been overridden for another reason, for instance they got married to someone in the goblin civilization.

Yeah, that sounds right.

In any case, first names are an imperfect system that I am proposing we replace effectively with the two-string surnames and replace their function with a seperate cultural name.  In effect, what I am doing is pointing out the cultural-identification function of non-unique first names, a function lost by making them unique and proposing we simply replace this with a reliably uniform name.

Just because first names are imperfect doesn't mean they're worthless. Cultural names, in contrast, would could only be remotely useful in Legends mode, or in a fort specifically (and painstakingly) run in order to attract a majority of citizens not from your own home civ.

My idea was to string together the first string of the civilization's with the last string of the site government.  So if my civilization was called the Guilds of Steel and my site government is called the Society of Rabbits, then all it's members would be called the Guildrabbits.  That means without having to check, whenever I see someone called Guildrabbit, I can immediately tell that they are part of the Society of Rabbits.  I can run a search and I can immediately come up with a list of historical characters that lived in their territory, without having to trawl through lists of "so and so stole a mug in Yr X" with a notepad.

I know Toady won't be working on UI improvements for many years to come. But even so, would it be so wrong to just ask for a Personal History Viewer window in Adventurer/Legends mode, where you can pop in somebody's name and see their cultural background? Doesn't that make a hell of a lot more sense than literally everyone, in every game run by every player, starting their name with their country & city, every single time it comes up for any reason?

That is exactly why surnames don't work.  If I meet two Smiths, then I cannot in any way determine them to be related to each-other, so why do surnames even exist?

Why do you do this? "I have encountered a minor flaw, tear down the entire system and start over!" Surnames exist because they work, or at least historically they did--in farming villages, if 2 people had the same name, it'd be VERY unusual for them to not be related. Now with the Internet, I can Google six of me before breakfast. Personally, I'm of the opinion that DF is a lot more like a farming village than the Internet.

That there are loads of other surnames does not change that, the situation still applies since if I meet two people who have the same surname I cannot by this fact alone determine them to be related; this problem is inherent to the surname system when played out of a long time period.

Fair enough, especially in a Legends more that doesn't allow you to view a person's family tree. But consider this: Assuming the two people share a common ancestor (and that the RNG didn't just give someone a surname that was already being used by another family), then a significant number of generations must have passed for those people to be essentially unrelated. And the longer the time elapsed, the greater the odds that one (or both) of the families might have changed their surname in the interim.

The solution is to create a new surname every time two people get married and have this inherited by their children, but when their children get married they replace one of their ancestral surnames with a new surname.  That way whenever I run across a person with the same surname I know they are of the same family group, rather than being somebody who shares a common ancestor a thousand years ago.

Okay, but the unavoidable downside of that is the remote ancestor gets forgotten, and you have to hop, skip, jump your way from name to name in Legends, as opposed to just searching the whole list for one name. You win some, you lose some.

[Leonidas]

The argument here seems to be conflating two distinct questions:
1) Should DF have a naming system that reflects lineage, occupation, or place of origin, similar to what real-world cultures have?
2) Should DF have an easier way to identify a dwarf's family connections and other relationships?

My answers:
1) No. It would be far too much work for too little benefit. If you're going to assign meaningful names to dwarves, then you may as well try to assign meaningful names to civilizations, sites, and geographic regions. Those are some major logic problems.

2) Yes. Someone should write a DFHack script showing family trees and other relationships. Any volunteers?

[Shazbot]

I don't see how dwarven last names getting a little more thought than "pick two words" is too much work to consider, and I especially disagree with the second clause of your statement. We already have meaningful names to civilizations, sites and regions. Swamps, mountains and forests all get names associated with their features. If anything we are bringing dwarf names up to standards.

[Ninjabread]

The argument here seems to be conflating two distinct questions:
1) Should DF have a naming system that reflects lineage, occupation, or place of origin, similar to what real-world cultures have?
2) Should DF have an easier way to identify a dwarf's family connections and other relationships?

My answers:
1) No. It would be far too much work for too little benefit. If you're going to assign meaningful names to dwarves, then you may as well try to assign meaningful names to civilizations, sites, and geographic regions. Those are some major logic problems.

2) Yes. Someone should write a DFHack script showing family trees and other relationships. Any volunteers?

Tbf geographic regions already have meaningful names to an extent, they have an adjective to describe how good/evil the place is, with neutral being more of a random word not associated with the other two, then there's a noun to describe the terrain feature such as like hills, mountains, deserts, forests, e.c.t.

Also making dwarves have a family surname wouldn't necesarily make names truly meaningful, just helpful, without having to rely on third-party apps, unless you add the event driven naming which is what is currently being debated, with one side saying "absolutely not, names should be randomly assigned upon marriage" and the other saying "it would add flavour to have lots of different systems"

I also don't doubt that Toady plans on making names meaningful at some point too, at least for sites, since it can just use local geography, wildlife, available resources, and the not-too-distant embark scenarios as a guide. Civs could also use their ethics as a guide too, but I'm getting off topic now, the point is, meaningless names are likely a placeholder, and I don't imagine they're here to stay

We already have meaningful names to civilizations, sites and regions.

I wouldn't say civs and sites are actually meaningful yet, they're just racially divided, my current world has a goblin civ called the Torment of Belches, if that name has actual meaning then that is one weird method of torture.

[Shazbot]

Torment of Belches is a name drawn from certain sub-categories of words. I think they're called spheres? You can align various entities with various spheres of naming patterns. This is, by itself, more complicated than nothing at all. You described region naming as well. With mythgen, those spheres might have different weights for each civilization. We could find some dwarves who have the evil name sphere and some screwy ethics, and their names would be an indicator of that. "The Tormenting Picks" would let you know its not a normal dwarf civilization. "Urist Goresplatter" would be of a family line stemming from that civilization, and why he's a hanging around in a distant site is a tale of his family's home being conquered by normal dwarves in year 30.

You wouldn't think to look without that hereditary name. So much of this game is based on player-storytelling, and so many old heroic tales based on lineage, that it seems crucial to bring these mechanisms into the game.

I'm entirely fine with multiple methods of assigning names if we can tweak and assign them. I have my idea of proper dwarves and so do you.

[Ninjabread]

That's fair enough, I was close with ethics then. I suppose the current meaning behind the naming of most things is lost due to the current rigidity and disparity of racial sphere alignment. Now I'm even more hyped for mythgen

[GoblinCookie]

Variations on a system (especially when the only thing that changes is the magnitude) is still just one system. Please, at least say you'd be open to switching the positions of the names around a bit. For instance, traditional Chinese puts the surname before the given name--and I personally think that makes a lot of sense. It's like biological nomenclature, putting the general words first and getting increasingly more specific: Homo sapiens Honeycutt Barbara. (We already write time as hour:minute:second, now if we could just get people to write year:month:day.)

What I meant was that there is only one system of names on a mechanical level, we just display things differently (or don't display) all the generated information depending upon context.  It appears that there are multiple systems because the way the information is displayed to the player, in 'reality' everyone has the full set of names for all possible cultural forms in their file.  We don't see them, so it does not matter, but their existence allows cultural transfer and changes to be handled without suddenly having to calculate tens of thousands of names at once. 

I get the impression that you believe my plan is "have the RNG procedurally create an all-new first name for every baby (or at least the historically significant ones), which will never be used again." Just in case, let me clarify: I only want the RNG to "grab a first name that is not currently in use, by anyone in the fort, or by anyone outside the fort who shares the baby's family name." So no two dwarves with matching names will ever be alive at the same time. Sure, Legends mode or engravings may still show dwarves with identical names, but that's hardly a big deal since historical records include the date on every entry. If the name you want shows up on events from 400 years ago, chances are it ain't the same dwarf. (Unless it's a vampire, in which case you've got bigger problems to be worrying about.)

Firstly I am not sure that the computer can even do what you are asking without using up tons of resources.  Secondly, it is more convenient to be able to use a search function to pinpoint individuals according to their various names, than it is to have to trawl through the small print to determine when everyone was born.  Better to give everyone a single name but render it according to present cultural context than to have multiple names.

I said "clan" because that's shorthand for "group of related individuals who live as a (generally) cohesive unit and share the same name", such as Bunnyhammer. The word 'clan' literally means 'family', that is all that the word formally means, and don't you EVER try to equate it with a form of government again, without some reputable sources to back you up.

Okay, you love the semantic game so let's play it.  According to wikipedia, the word clan is a loan-word from Gaelic.  The thing is that.

The word clan is derived from the Gaelic clann[1] meaning "children" or "progeny"; it is not from the word for "family" in either Irish[2][3] or Scottish Gaelic. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was introduced into English in around 1425, as a label for the nature of the society of the Scottish Highlands.[4]

The thing here is that the context in which it was originally used relates to a system of government and society that prevailed in the highlands of Scotland.  This is described here.  If you want to somehow argue that they were not governments then we have this quote.

The main legal process used within the clans to settle criminal and civil disputes was known as arbitration, in which the offending and aggrieved sides put their cases to a panel that was drawn from the leading gentry and was overseen by the clan chief.[13] There was no appeal against the decision made by the panel, which was usually recorded in the local Royal or Burgh court.[13]

The article makes it quite clear that clans were mostly a system of local government in Scotland, the clan members were not even necessarily biologically related to each-other, that is actually one of the myths about clans that the wikipedia article mentions.

It is a common misconception that every person who bears a clan's name is a lineal descendant of the chiefs.[2] Many clansmen although not related to the chief took the chief's surname as their own to either show solidarity, or to obtain basic protection or for much needed sustenance.[2] Most of the followers of the clan were tenants, who supplied labour to the clan leaders.[3] Contrary to popular belief, the ordinary clansmen rarely had any blood tie of kinship with the clan chiefs, but they took the chief's surname as their own when surnames came into common use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[3] Thus by the eighteenth century the myth had arisen that the whole clan was descended from one ancestor, with the Scottish Gaelic of "clan" meaning "children" or "offspring".[3]

Wikipedia even has a line that pretty much sums up your confused use of the term clan outside of it's political context. 

Apart from these different historical traditions of kinship, conceptual confusion arises from colloquial usages of the term.

Clans are simply not the same thing as families, so don't use the term to imply that unless you want to confuse people.  Clans are in most cases closer to the present site-governments than they are to the mere idea of a family divorced of it's political context. 

And what's so wrong about that? It works for vampires. It works for Eminem. It worked for Gandalf. True, there are times where realism should take a back seat to convenience, but I don't think this is one of them. People taking new names (or having names thrust upon them, willingly or not) tells a more interesting story, and can help add depth to the character.

The thing is we already have a large number of false aliases used by individuals.  Having multiple 'true' names get's confusing and we don't actually need them. 

Just because first names are imperfect doesn't mean they're worthless. Cultural names, in contrast, would could only be remotely useful in Legends mode, or in a fort specifically (and painstakingly) run in order to attract a majority of citizens not from your own home civ.

It is also of great use in adventure mode.  I agree that it's utility in fortress mode is limited, but it does have a small functionality there as well in regard to visitors.  When there are more visitors in the future from proximate settlements, this functionality would increase. 

I know Toady won't be working on UI improvements for many years to come. But even so, would it be so wrong to just ask for a Personal History Viewer window in Adventurer/Legends mode, where you can pop in somebody's name and see their cultural background? Doesn't that make a hell of a lot more sense than literally everyone, in every game run by every player, starting their name with their country & city, every single time it comes up for any reason?

Makes sense?  That is pretty much what the people in the above mentioned clans did when surnames were introduced, they all adopted the name of their clan, so in effect the entire area did assume a collective surname identifying their government membership, recall that clan members were not necessarily closely related at a family level. 

Why do you do this? "I have encountered a minor flaw, tear down the entire system and start over!" Surnames exist because they work, or at least historically they did--in farming villages, if 2 people had the same name, it'd be VERY unusual for them to not be related. Now with the Internet, I can Google six of me before breakfast. Personally, I'm of the opinion that DF is a lot more like a farming village than the Internet.

People in farming villages did not *have* surnames in most countries for most of history.  The only people who had surnames for most of history were not peasants but nobles.  Said nobles would bear the name of their HOUSE, which actually means what it says on the tin.  People bore the names of their houses because that way they would lay claim to a place *in* that household, which if it was a rich and powerful household was worth doing.

Ordinary people only got surnames quite late and that is the main reason why there are so many of them about. 

Fair enough, especially in a Legends more that doesn't allow you to view a person's family tree. But consider this: Assuming the two people share a common ancestor (and that the RNG didn't just give someone a surname that was already being used by another family), then a significant number of generations must have passed for those people to be essentially unrelated. And the longer the time elapsed, the greater the odds that one (or both) of the families might have changed their surname in the interim.

If we have a small number of people (which we do to begin with) and they multiply to fill the earth, then the number of surnames does not increase to keep up with the exponential increase in population.  In real-life it basically worked the other way around, the people filled the earth first and then surnames came about at the end. 

If people keep changing there surnames at random, then that simply makes the whole system work even worse.  That is because any of anyone's children might have suddenly decided to adopt a new surname, while the other children did not.  Being random there is no rationality to the situation, all the children could decide arbitrarily to adopt new surnames or they might go five generations without doing so.

Okay, but the unavoidable downside of that is the remote ancestor gets forgotten, and you have to hop, skip, jump your way from name to name in Legends, as opposed to just searching the whole list for one name. You win some, you lose some.

The assumption is that we don't care as much about the remote ancestors as we do about the present generations.  But with my system you can name-hop backwards to the ancestors, especially if we have more than one generation in the names.

[Shazbot]

So we've gone from this being a needlessly complicated waste of time that will further obscure the dwarves in practice, to insisting we adopt a system not experienced in Western culture and, without analogue, must have its mechanisms learned by a new player in order to distinguish it from randomness.

Kay.

[SixOfSpades]

It appears that there are multiple systems because the way the information is displayed to the player, in 'reality' everyone has the full set of names for all possible cultural forms in their file.  We don't see them, so it does not matter, but their existence allows cultural transfer and changes to be handled without suddenly having to calculate tens of thousands of names at once.

Okay, good, that's where I was going too. We (or somebody) should compile a list of all the suggested naming systems, and from that nail down all the facets (including birth date) of a dwarf's "maximum" (internal) name.

I only want the RNG to "grab a first name that is not currently in use, by anyone in the fort, or by anyone outside the fort who shares the baby's family name." So no two dwarves with matching names will ever be alive at the same time.

Firstly I am not sure that the computer can even do what you are asking without using up tons of resources.  Secondly, it is more convenient to be able to use a search function to pinpoint individuals according to their various names, than it is to have to trawl through the small print to determine when everyone was born.

I doubt the resources will be an issue: It can just search by name as you said, and if it comes up with multiple matches (dwarves that happen to use the same specified external name at different points in history), then it can just display all of those hits, each with their own listed birth dates, and the user can choose between them. This will give the computer a unique identity (maximum internal name) to search for, and it then returns all the Legends mode (or wherever) matches for that particular identity.


And now, the "clan" rigmarole. I'll try to keep it short & sweet.

The main legal process used within the clans to settle criminal and civil disputes was known as arbitration, in which the offending and aggrieved sides put their cases to a panel that was drawn from the leading gentry and was overseen by the clan chief.

Yes--the clans practiced self-government. But they also practiced a lot of other things too, such as warfare, and agriculture, and erecting buildings. So to say that "a clan is a form of government" makes precisely as much sense as "clanning is a method of growing crops", or "clan is a style of architecture". The best match for how you're using "clan" might be "organization", a means of gathering, relating, and directing people. In other words, "the nature of the society." Societies have governments, they are not in themselves governments (or forms thereof).
Yes, not all the people who claimed to be part of the clan were actual family members of the clan chief. Some were related only through marriage, some were deemed useful enough to be "adopted" into the clan and allowed to live with them, and some were mere servants or other vassals, who worked their masters' land and were fed, housed, clothed, and often paid in return for their labors. Yet even the least of these non-family members still felt a strong affiliation with their clan--they would still walk the streets in their master's livery, still march to war at his side, and still refer to themselves as being of "Clan / House [Family Name]". Because that's what was convenient, it told the listener (generally) where they lived, who their master was, and which powerful family you were messing with if you pissed them off, in just 2 or 3 words.

The word clan is derived from the Gaelic clann[1] meaning "children" or "progeny"; it is not from the word for "family" in either Irish[2][3] or Scottish Gaelic.

And now it's semantics time. Your own Wikipedia quote seems to imply a firm distinction between "family" and "progeny"; I submit that this distinction is not the difference of inclusion (as in, progeny is a subset of family), but rather one of formal literalism: The exact same difference between "father" and "father figure". Because that's what a clan chief was: To the actual members of his family, he was the literal father (or at least the paterfamilias), but to his extended household, his "progeny", he was the father figure. Those who served him, but were not related to him, could still claim membership in his clan because of their affiliation--the word itself still bears traces of this:

. . . from French affiliation, from Medieval Latin affiliationem (nominative affiliatio), noun of action from past participle stem of Latin affiliare "to adopt a son," from ad- "to" (see ad- ) + filius "son" (see filial ). Figurative sense of "adoption by a society, of branches" first recorded 1799.  -- Dictionary.com

So when I said "The word 'clan' literally means 'family', that is all that the word formally means", that's still quite correct. Formally, a clan is the family, those who are joined by marriage if not blood, the chief's literal sons. Informally, it can mean an entire town, the chief's adopted sons. But even an entire town is still not a form of government, and I'll thank you to not to confuse the two again.


We now return you to the actual thread, already in progress.

The thing is we already have a large number of false aliases used by individuals.  Having multiple 'true' names get's confusing and we don't actually need them.

There's a big difference between "don't need" and "shouldn't use". Just picture reading about the historical event, "In 538, the dwarf vampire Kadol Pulleywhips was revealed to be the dwarf vampire Kadol Pulleywhips." (Shocking! What a twist!) So yes, this creature should still have one internal 'true' name like everybody else, but possible aliases are going to have to be considered as facets of external names to be shown.

It [using one's civ and site names as one's first name] is also of great use in adventure mode.  I agree that it's utility in fortress mode is limited, but it does have a small functionality there as well in regard to visitors.  When there are more visitors in the future from proximate settlements, this functionality would increase.

Even in a fort with 90% visitors, Civ/site first names would still be a definite liability for just about every purpose. The only time they'd make sense would be in a separate list that organized everybody by their civilization and site--in which case there would still be no reason to directly include these aspects in a person's name.

That is pretty much what the people in the above mentioned clans did when surnames were introduced, they all adopted the name of their clan

I can only assume that this allowed surname adoption was rather unique to the Scottish clans (as opposed to, for instance, the Japanese ones), because the alternative is to think that in other parts of the world, there were a bunch of clan chiefs with names like Fields, Miller, Shepherd, Brooks, Cooper, and Ford running around. I for one feel quite sure that in general, the real clan members would be VERY opposed to the entire population of tenant farmers actually taking up the clan chief's surname. I guess the Scots were okay with it because each clan already knew quite well who was in line to inherit, there was no risk of being usurped by a pretender.

--in farming villages, if 2 people had the same name, it'd be VERY unusual for them to not be related.

People in farming villages did not *have* surnames in most countries for most of history.  The only people who had surnames for most of history were not peasants but nobles.

Well, a lot of cultures did use patronymics / matronymics, some of which were carried for only 1 generation--you can consider those to be "true" surnames or not, it matters little, but they commonly were used to help identify an individual and thus certainly count as a name. The Wikipedia page on patronymics lists many cultures worldwide that historically have used them . . . it doesn't specify peasantry (or give many dates), but if such names are "common", they're clearly not limited to the nobility.

If people keep changing there surnames at random, then that simply makes the whole system work even worse.  That is because any of anyone's children might have suddenly decided to adopt a new surname, while the other children did not.  Being random there is no rationality to the situation, all the children could decide arbitrarily to adopt new surnames or they might go five generations without doing so.

I myself have never suggested random surnames, or "arbitrarily" adopting a new one, in fact my views are quite the contrary. I think the only exact example I gave was of the historical dwarf in question not affecting her OWN name, but only the names of her children born after the fact. I also suggested that any preexisting children of hers might (or might not) change their own names to match, to keep the new clan united under its founder.

The assumption is that we don't care as much about the remote ancestors as we do about the present generations.

I think some cultures should care more about the original dwarves, other cultures shouldn't--and their different naming systems should reflect that.

So we've gone from this being a needlessly complicated waste of time that will further obscure the dwarves in practice, to insisting we adopt a system not experienced in Western culture and, without analogue, must have its mechanisms learned by a new player in order to distinguish it from randomness.

Wait -- which one of those bad ideas are you associating with me? 

[Shazbot]

None, comrade.

[GoblinCookie]

Okay, good, that's where I was going too. We (or somebody) should compile a list of all the suggested naming systems, and from that nail down all the facets (including birth date) of a dwarf's "maximum" (internal) name.

The naming systems are based upon the values of the civ, basically the names record information for the player that the civilisations consider relevant.  For instance if a society hates [FAMILY] then it does not record family surnames, while the more it likes [FAMILY] then the more generations of family the names record.  Over time as the values of those in power shift, naming systems can be changed as a historical event and as a result the 'true name' of the creatures as we see them change accordingly, but with no actual change in the underlying data. 

I doubt the resources will be an issue: It can just search by name as you said, and if it comes up with multiple matches (dwarves that happen to use the same specified external name at different points in history), then it can just display all of those hits, each with their own listed birth dates, and the user can choose between them. This will give the computer a unique identity (maximum internal name) to search for, and it then returns all the Legends mode (or wherever) matches for that particular identity.

Searching by name frequently takes a little while even when we do it.  To have the computer have to do thousands of searches constantly in order to make sure every character does not share a name with an existing living character, that is pretty much going to be a major resource drain.  My idea works better because it is just a set of random numbers that are generated based on the seed without any need to 'look back'. 

Yes--the clans practiced self-government. But they also practiced a lot of other things too, such as warfare, and agriculture, and erecting buildings. So to say that "a clan is a form of government" makes precisely as much sense as "clanning is a method of growing crops", or "clan is a style of architecture". The best match for how you're using "clan" might be "organization", a means of gathering, relating, and directing people. In other words, "the nature of the society." Societies have governments, they are not in themselves governments (or forms thereof).
Yes, not all the people who claimed to be part of the clan were actual family members of the clan chief. Some were related only through marriage, some were deemed useful enough to be "adopted" into the clan and allowed to live with them, and some were mere servants or other vassals, who worked their masters' land and were fed, housed, clothed, and often paid in return for their labors. Yet even the least of these non-family members still felt a strong affiliation with their clan--they would still walk the streets in their master's livery, still march to war at his side, and still refer to themselves as being of "Clan / House [Family Name]". Because that's what was convenient, it told the listener (generally) where they lived, who their master was, and which powerful family you were messing with if you pissed them off, in just 2 or 3 words.

This is quite the can of worms we open up by talking about the definitions of these mixed-up things.  Yes, clans are not a form of government, they are a form of state with various government forms ruling over them.  So they are states not governments, as in they are thing over which a government rules (State) and the means by which they do so but not the actual thing making the decisions (Government). 

And now it's semantics time. Your own Wikipedia quote seems to imply a firm distinction between "family" and "progeny"; I submit that this distinction is not the difference of inclusion (as in, progeny is a subset of family), but rather one of formal literalism: The exact same difference between "father" and "father figure". Because that's what a clan chief was: To the actual members of his family, he was the literal father (or at least the paterfamilias), but to his extended household, his "progeny", he was the father figure. Those who served him, but were not related to him, could still claim membership in his clan because of their affiliation--the word itself still bears traces of this:

. . . from French affiliation, from Medieval Latin affiliationem (nominative affiliatio), noun of action from past participle stem of Latin affiliare "to adopt a son," from ad- "to" (see ad- ) + filius "son" (see filial ). Figurative sense of "adoption by a society, of branches" first recorded 1799.  -- Dictionary.com

So when I said "The word 'clan' literally means 'family', that is all that the word formally means", that's still quite correct. Formally, a clan is the family, those who are joined by marriage if not blood, the chief's literal sons. Informally, it can mean an entire town, the chief's adopted sons. But even an entire town is still not a form of government, and I'll thank you to not to confuse the two again.

I think you are confusing two different forms of societies here.  The system where things are centred around the households of nobles, that is a Feudal system rather than a Tribal one and everything you are saying is based upon anachronistically imposing the former society on to the latter. 

Likely the clans started off as simple family units but they outgrew that situation as the population increased, this however is quite different from a situation where we have a single family unit in charge of subordinate family units.  That could be why the word means progeny but the thing is *not* actually a family unit.

We could do something similar in dwarf fortress, originally a site can be inhabited by a literal family, whose name is also that of the site government.  Over time as more people move in however, we end up with a situation where things grow beyond that scale but the name remains that of the first original family that lived in the site.  The original family surname goes out of use but remains as the name of the site. 

There's a big difference between "don't need" and "shouldn't use". Just picture reading about the historical event, "In 538, the dwarf vampire Kadol Pulleywhips was revealed to be the dwarf vampire Kadol Pulleywhips." (Shocking! What a twist!) So yes, this creature should still have one internal 'true' name like everybody else, but possible aliases are going to have to be considered as facets of external names to be shown.

Makes sense. 

Even in a fort with 90% visitors, Civ/site first names would still be a definite liability for just about every purpose. The only time they'd make sense would be in a separate list that organized everybody by their civilization and site--in which case there would still be no reason to directly include these aspects in a person's name.

It is more convenient to know something at a glance than is to have to interrupt your gameplay by using a special search function for that specific purpose.  In any case, in certain cases we simply won't be able to see that information in any case because the society in the game did not consider it important and will have to use a less quick means of doing so. 

I can only assume that this allowed surname adoption was rather unique to the Scottish clans (as opposed to, for instance, the Japanese ones), because the alternative is to think that in other parts of the world, there were a bunch of clan chiefs with names like Fields, Miller, Shepherd, Brooks, Cooper, and Ford running around. I for one feel quite sure that in general, the real clan members would be VERY opposed to the entire population of tenant farmers actually taking up the clan chief's surname. I guess the Scots were okay with it because each clan already knew quite well who was in line to inherit, there was no risk of being usurped by a pretender.

The clans did not adopt the surnames, the individuals adopted the surnames and it just happened that the majority of them adopted the name of their pre-existing clan as their surname; that a few chose to adopt other names does not mean anything since the system was imposed from without on the assumption that individuals would pick their own names.  This also happened quite recently at a time when the clan system was on the way out anyway. 

The clan chiefs are not going to object to tenant farmers assuming their surname, because they are not allocating their 'own' land, they are allocating the clan's land.  Both they and the farmers are equally members of the exact same clan, the latter are as much 'real' clan members as the former, the former just happen to be part of the clan's government while the latter are not.  It is like arguing that the President of America is more American than everyone else. 

Well, a lot of cultures did use patronymics / matronymics, some of which were carried for only 1 generation--you can consider those to be "true" surnames or not, it matters little, but they commonly were used to help identify an individual and thus certainly count as a name. The Wikipedia page on patronymics lists many cultures worldwide that historically have used them . . . it doesn't specify peasantry (or give many dates), but if such names are "common", they're clearly not limited to the nobility.

The complicated thing here that we have official and unofficial surnames.  While lots of people had surnames, only nobility have surnames that were official and those were the names of their HOUSES, *not* the names of their families.  Why do we talk about House Lannister, House Targaryen and House Stark, rather than family whatever.  That is because those things are claims made to membership in a property holding unit, which originally meant just the premises of someone's home.  Why we don't end with thousands of people called that surname is because belonging to a house is a double-edged sword, you get more rights but you are also obligated to the leadership of the house, such that you cannot do certain things (like marry) without the permission of the  head of the house.  Once you have set up your own independent household, you adopt a new surname rather than using the surname of your old household and doing otherwise would compromise your independence. 

Now that is how things work in a Feudal system.  A tribal system (or clan system) does not have official surnames or any need for them.  That is because the original purpose of official surnames is to distinguish those who are *of* the House from the various minions that are merely *in* the house (literally or in the sense of on their land).  In a tribe (nearly) everyone that lives in the tribe's territory is considered to be of the tribe, so there is no need for the whole House of X concept.

I myself have never suggested random surnames, or "arbitrarily" adopting a new one, in fact my views are quite the contrary. I think the only exact example I gave was of the historical dwarf in question not affecting her OWN name, but only the names of her children born after the fact. I also suggested that any preexisting children of hers might (or might not) change their own names to match, to keep the new clan united under its founder.

If they simply 'choose' to do it, given this is not real-life that is exactly the same as saying they do so randomly. 

I think some cultures should care more about the original dwarves, other cultures shouldn't--and their different naming systems should reflect that.

The original dwarves had parents in reality did they not?  They are just a game-mechanic unless we want to go into the original dwarves of what?.

None, comrade.

This is what happens when we don't quote what we are replying too.  Nobody knows what we are responding to nor to whom.

[Bumber]

Searching by name frequently takes a little while even when we do it.  To have the computer have to do thousands of searches constantly in order to make sure every character does not share a name with an existing living character, that is pretty much going to be a major resource drain.  My idea works better because it is just a set of random numbers that are generated based on the seed without any need to 'look back'.

This is what hash tables are for.

[Dorsidwarf]

Searching by name frequently takes a little while even when we do it.  To have the computer have to do thousands of searches constantly in order to make sure every character does not share a name with an existing living character, that is pretty much going to be a major resource drain.  My idea works better because it is just a set of random numbers that are generated based on the seed without any need to 'look back'.

This is what hash tables are for.

Also, dwarves aren’t born/migrate that often... it’s not like characters change their names every few seconds

[SixOfSpades]

The naming systems are based upon the values of the civ, basically the names record information for the player that the civilisations consider relevant. . . . Over time as the values of those in power shift, naming systems can be changed as a historical event and as a result the 'true name' of the creatures as we see them change accordingly, but with no actual change in the underlying data.

I'm generally in agreement, but the more I think about the issue, the more I can see how Toady might not consider it worth it. Even if a civ's naming convention is extremely short and they care nothing for past generations, a member of that culture might marry into a society that considers history very important, and they demand to know short-name dwarf's ancestors at least 3 generations back. So ideally, the game would make every dwarf's internal true name contain every possible thing that any external naming system might need to know. But, seriously. Consider the odds that
a) an intercultural marriage even happens,
b) the naming systems would be so egregiously different, and
c) the player actually double-checks to see if short-name dwarf's newly lengthened name is in fact historically accurate.
All in all, that's a kinda flimsy reason to keep everyone's entire family tree stored in memory, just in case they should happen to marry someone who cares about it. I mean, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what the game already does (it does it for historical figures, at least), but on the whole, I'd rather have my game Load and Save faster.

This is quite the can of worms we open up by talking about the definitions of these mixed-up things.  Yes, clans are not a form of government, they are a form of state with various government forms ruling over them.  So they are states not governments, as in they are thing over which a government rules (State) and the means by which they do so but not the actual thing making the decisions (Government).

Well, when one of the supporting documents opens with the difference between "family" and "progeny", you just know some hairs are going to be split. As for the nature of clans, I myself would say they're more often a society than a state, because they usually didn't exist in isolation, there was more than one family sharing influence over an area. Only when a single clan rose to dominance could they be called a state, and of course the more closely they approached 100% of the population (as some of the Scottish clans may have done), the more they both performed the duties of local government, and were themselves the governed. Whether you (or I) want to cast this in a tribal-system or feudal-system light doesn't much matter: One exerted control militarily, the other more economically, it made little difference to the ruled.

Even in a fort with 90% visitors, Civ/site first names would still be a definite liability for just about every purpose. The only time they'd make sense would be in a separate list that organized everybody by their civilization and site--in which case there would still be no reason to directly include these aspects in a person's name.

It is more convenient to know something at a glance than is to have to interrupt your gameplay by using a special search function for that specific purpose.  In any case, in certain cases we simply won't be able to see that information in any case because the society in the game did not consider it important and will have to use a less quick means of doing so.

It would be even more convenient to NOT have a big chunk of an entity's visible name be taken up by a fact that, 99.9% of the time, a player couldn't care less about. Why do you insist on defending this notion? Especially when the example I already gave (a menu specifically for listing creatures by their civ/site attributes) precisely overrides the counter-argument you just made (some cultures won't include the civ/site in people's names)? Regardless, it is a bad idea for ANY culture to make its civilization and/or site name be a default, integral part of the average citizen's name. It is a bad idea. The idea is bad.

The clan chiefs are not going to object to tenant farmers assuming their surname, because they are not allocating their 'own' land, they are allocating the clan's land.  Both they and the farmers are equally members of the exact same clan, the latter are as much 'real' clan members as the former, the former just happen to be part of the clan's government while the latter are not.

Your first statement makes no applicable sense that I can discern. Your second is analogous to saying that doctors would not object if hospital janitors claimed that they should be allowed to call themselves "doctors" as well, because both groups of people are equally employed by hospitals, the former just happen to have medical degrees while the latter do not.

The complicated thing here that we have official and unofficial surnames.  While lots of people had surnames, only nobility have surnames that were official and those were the names of their HOUSES, *not* the names of their families.  Why do we talk about House Lannister, House Targaryen and House Stark, rather than family whatever.

GoblinCookie, you are very clearly intelligent. But you are not as intelligent as you are stubborn, at times leading you to let your stubbornness take control. I think you would do well to bring those traits into a more harmonious alignment. Your choice of Game of Thrones does not provide a good example for the point you are trying to make--indeed, it provides a much better example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

But let me respond to what you could have said. In real life, the "official and unofficial surnames" you mention are termed titles and surnames--every noble has one of each. Queen Elizabeth II is her title, while her actual name is Elizabeth Windsor, of the House of Windsor--and yes, the family does own Windsor Castle (among others). This would well support your argument--IF it were a typical case. Sadly, it's not, as the family is named after the castle not because it was a key part of their ancestral holdings, but because her grandfather deliberately changed the family's name (from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), during a wave of public anti-German sentiment.
     To nail down what is more usual, I went here and looked for some name commonalities. Here's what I found:

TITLE		NAME		FAMILY SEAT
Duke of Norfolk		Edward Fitzalan-Howard		Arundel Castle
Marquess of Lansdowne		Charles Petty-FitzMaurice		Bowood House
Earl of Oxford		Aubrey de Vere		Castle Hedingham
Viscount Hardinge		Thomas Henry de Montarville Hardinge		Broadmere House

Etc., etc.
Now, mind you, there ARE some cases where the Title and Surname do match, and even some matches between the Title and Seat . . . but I didn't see any between Surname and Seat. Feel free to have a look for yourself, if you wish, I didn't try very hard.

I myself have never suggested random surnames, or "arbitrarily" adopting a new one, . . . . I also suggested that any preexisting children of hers might (or might not) change their own names to match, to keep the new clan united under its founder.

If they simply 'choose' to do it, given this is not real-life that is exactly the same as saying they do so randomly.

There's a BIG difference between deciding which of 2 names to use, and picking truly at random from a pool of thousands. Besides, if each dwarf's "choice" is based on their own personal values, ethics, and affinity for any existing family members of each of the two names, that can hardly be called random at all.

I think some cultures should care more about the original dwarves, other cultures shouldn't--and their different naming systems should reflect that.

The original dwarves had parents in reality did they not?  They are just a game-mechanic unless we want to go into the original dwarves of what?.

Yeah, when I said "the original dwarves" I meant precisely that, those who had no parents because they were the first of their kind.

None, comrade.

This is what happens when we don't quote what we are replying too.  Nobody knows what we are responding to nor to whom.

Shazbot was addressing me--and apparently didn't feel like quoting because I was the last person to address him.