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[Hussell]

In the latest releases, names for things have started to be less random (e.g. diety names are related to their sphere of influence). Since parent/child and spouse relationships are tracked now, and we can discover a lot about them in legends mode, a revamp of the older name systems might be in the works.

Right now, all the named people and creatures get a randomly generated name. Non-kobold civilization creatures are named Word1 Word2Word3, where the three words are all picked at random from the appropriate language file. Disadvantages include: children's names have no relation to their parent's names; males and females use the same set of names; there are no common names (all are equally rare, and the two-word part is usually unique).

Rather than ask for a naming system identical to that used in my culture, I decided to do a little research into real-world naming systems:

United States, the system most of you will be familiar with:
PersonalName MiddleName FamilyName
 MiddleName is usually a second personal name
 wives change their FamilyName to their husband's FamilyName upon marriage
 wives sometimes replace their MiddleName with their original FamilyName
 all children are given the same FamilyName as their father

Spain, a more gender neutral system:
PersonalName FatherFamilyName MotherFamilyName
 wives do not change their names
 all children: PersonalName [father's FatherFamilyName] [mother's FatherFamilyName]

Iceland, a system using patronymics instead of family names:
PersonalName ParentName
 wives do not change their names
 sons: PersonalName [father's PersonalName]son
 daughters: PersonalName [father's PersonalName]dóttir
 occasionally the mother's PersonalName is used instead (a matronymic)
 the parent's PersonalName is put into the genitive case, e.g., Eric -> Ericsson/Ericsdóttir

China, a system using a different order for the parts of the name:
FamilyName GenerationName PersonalName
 wives may become: [husband's FamilyName] FamilyName GenerationName PersonalName
 all children take the same FamilyName as the father
 GenerationNames are used by some families:
  siblings and cousins of the same generation all share the same GenerationName
  each family has a fixed, repeating sequence of GenerationNames (often the syllables of a generation poem)
  treated as part of the personal name
  all children use the father's family's generation naming system

Arabic, an unusually complicated system:
ChildName PersonalName Descriptive MaleAncestorName(s) GroupName
 not everyone uses the whole set of name-parts, but it isn't uncommon
 Childname acts as a sort of honorific or indicator of adult status
  father: Abu [eldest child's PersonalName] (father of ...)
  mother: Umm [eldest child's PersonalName] (mother of ...)
  childless (and some other) adults may adopt a metaphorical ChildName
 Descriptive ascribes a quality to the person (e.g. al-Jamil, "the beautiful")
 the sequence of MaleAncestorNames name the person's father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc.
  most MaleAncestorNames: bin [father's PersonalName] (son of ...)
  daughter's first MaleAncestorName: bint [father's PersonalName] (daughter of ...)
 GroupName is often an occupation, country-name, tribe-name, or true family-name (e.g. al-Filistin, "the Palestine")

So, there are all kinds of possible naming systems. We could have a different one for each race, or even a different one for every country. Humans could use patronymics, Dwarves occupation names, Elves place names, and Goblins religious names (e.g., Demonslave, Fireworshipper). Dwarves, obviously, should use a gender-neutral system.

Names could be assigned by a variety of systems during the age of Myth, then become fossilized into family names during later ages, in the same way Johnson no longer means your father's name is John, and Smith doesn't mean you are one.

[Dame de la Licorne]

This has also been discussed at length here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=5492.0

[thvaz]

Nonetheless, great suggestion, and good work at the research. My culture use the "spanish" name system, though here it's common for the wives to add theirs husband family´s name to the end of her own, though it's becoming less common.

I hope Toady adds something along these lines.

[Granite26]

Excellent research, obligatory finger wagging about an unnecessary new topic so soon after the last one, suggestion to make the cultural naming conventions customizable and generic.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

My culture is broken.
I don't know who use what for names.
Some use Arabic style, some Sanskerta style (hindi), some US style, some their own style...

Well, I'm in the messy capital of the so different groups of peoples...

But I said it is great suggestion, as it will make DF creatures more unique.

But I proposed that this is civ-dependant, not race, because it is not make sense to make all race have same style nor same languange. Except they are hive-minded Elves.

[Techhead]

The profession name is nice, but you can only have so many Unib Miners, Fath Masons, and Urist Smiths.

[Duke 2.0]

 I like this. I have always wanted more fluff when it comes to culture. Like buildings reflecting a bit on their biome, and a nation-wide archetectural style. So say the capitol is situated in a cold biome. All the buildings would have steep ceilings to deflect snow. They have a city in a temperate forest somewhere. Despite the lack of snow, the buildings still have steep ceilings in addition to whatever they need to survive in the biome.

 Replace archetectural stuff with naming stuff, and you have where I'm going.

[Tacroy]

We could categorize the words already in the wordlist so that there are categories for different job types. There would of course be overlap between professions.

Then I think it would be interesting to make names like go like:

<randfirstname> <rand from parent's job category><descriptive family name>

This way, the dorfy names would still look the same as they do now, but you could trace families.

For instance, Urist Stonecrushed is the child of Urist Cheesecrushed (you can tell because they're both in the Crushed family). Cheesecrushed's profession has something to do with stone (possibly a miner or an engraver), and Cheesecrushed's parent was some sort of dairy worker or farmer.

Also, it would be really neat if dorfs would sometimes name their children after things that are important to them, like dieties or bauxite.

[Reasonableman]

What we need is some kind of shared dwarvish dictionary, like a wiki topic that anyone can add to, so as to build the vocabulary enough to support different family names for every single person. Same thing for every other language.

Either that or we could just plagiarize Tolkien.

[Dame de la Licorne]

Either that or we could just plagiarize Tolkien.

What, and take all the fun out of it?

[Red Jackard]

Rather than ask for a naming system identical to that used in my culture, I decided to do a little research into real-world naming systems:

I am adrool with anticipation

There would have to be a few random names still so everyone doesn't end up sharing the names of the founders

[Hussell]

./raw/objects/language_SYM.txt defines sets of words for naming things like biomes, towns, caves, and so on. It wouldn't be hard to add a few categories for civ creature names, like professions, generic place names (Ford, Hall, Wood), or whatever else we can come up with. For that to work, all we need is a tag in the creature definitions for the set of words to draw their names from.

While we're at it, a set of words to draw awarded names from would be nice. I would prefer my adventurer to become "Suku Goodfight, Mighty the Exterminator" instead of "Suku Goodfight, Fencepost the Brook". Even more fun would be awarded names that actually reflect how they were earned, e.g., "Suku Goodfight, Ratbane and Swallowmankiller".

A possible naming system for dwarves:
PersonalName FamilyName ProfessionName
 PersonalName is drawn from a set used for both males and females
 FamilyName is a two-word compound from a second (and third?) set of words
 wives do not change their name
 sons inherit their father's FamilyName, daughters their mother's
 ProfessionName assigned based on labors enabled on this dwarf

Seems dwarvish to me, since I imagine them putting some importance on family lineage and not much on gender. This system is fair about passing on both parents' family names. You can still tell the gender of a dwarf from his/her name, despite the gender-neutral personal names, because the family names are gender specific. Could be important if you can't tell whether someone is a girl or a boy just by looking at 'em. Not too different from the current randomly generated name plus highest skill level profession.

To keep the pool of family names varied, I suggest having dwarves pick new family names when they found a new fortress. Basically, they set off into the wilderness to establish new clans. Immigration could still spread successful family names, but I imagine fortresses would mostly be dominated by particular families/clans.

[Spey]

*thread necromancy*

I thought I would just add to this discussion with some info about welsh names.

in times gone by, the welsh didnt have a surname, and simply took the name of their father, so gryff son of rhys would be gryff ap rhys, this seems pretty much in line with similar naming systems of the time, like the scandinavians.

also it wasnt uncommon for people to take up the name of their profession either, jones the smith or ewan the shop for example.

however, after the english annexed wales, the convention of surnames was put in place, and many modern surnames are today derived from the rendering of the welsh patronym into english surname

ap rhys, became price
ap richard, becomes prichard
ap howell, powell
ap owen, bowen
etc etc etc...

[Vattic]

For some added complexity, unnecessary maybe but traditional, in my family they always call the first born male of the first born male John, my Grandfather only had two daughters, first born being my mum, a few years after I was born my parents decided my middle name should be John but we are yet to officially change it.

I only mention this because as said for added complexities sake it might be interesting, add more flavour in a realistic way.

One other thing, it could weight the first names when it picks babies and give parents or grandparents names more chance of being picked, it could even multiply when the name is used two or more generations in a row. If you just included this weighting technique when choosing the name of the first born child then it would cause the same effect as the tradition in my family.