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[BonSequitur]

Right now, the random name generator is really good at creating bizarre, amusing names and really bad at generating appropriate names. My idea is just to give each word in the DF dictionary a set of tags; and, when generating a name, look for a list of all the tags that relate to the thing being named, and draw words from that list more often than the RNG would draw them from the whole dictionary. This might be computing intensive, but the game only generates names occasionally (And it might cache names for known quantities such as immigrants).

Tags would be both defined in the raws (All goblins like evil and violent words), and defined by world gen - civilizations and groups would like words in their name and symbol. Gameplay could add more words - if you have a lot of casualties to murderous elephants, elephants might figure in names as they're now part of your fortress' culture.

So when giving Urist a last name, the game would assemble a list of names. It would include:

• Words that are "dwarven," like ones relating to stone, metal, and craftsdwarfship.
• Words relating to Urist's civilization.
• Words relating to the fortress Urist was born at.

This can be made more complex. When naming an artifact, for example, the game would look at its civilization, creator, materials, type, and even whether it was the product of a fey or fell mood.

This system is designed to still fail amusingly, like the regular DF name generator does. It's not meant to produce appropriate names 100% of the time. Unrelated words would still get used, and by being used, might be added to a civilization's dictionary. Urist Lionseether the mythical champion is a member of a northern civilization that has never encountered lions in its territory, but they still use "lion" a lot in names for things because of him.

[Apegrape]

It'd be good to have a sort of "Urist "Cogson" thingie. Like Urist gets his last name from his fathers first or something.

[Silverionmox]

It would even be good to identify dwarves by their first name only, until they have earned their second name. That means, when they do something extraordinary as warrior, craftsman, in social situations or in another way; they would get an appropriate random name, eg. marmotslayer, swelter, the fiery scolder, etc.

[BonSequitur]

Perhaps dwarves could use a patronymic until they "earn" a proper name. That way you can tell Urist Cogsson apart from Cog Uristsson, etc.

Alternatively, for even more distinction, maybe male dwarves use matronymics and female dwarves use patronymics.

[Apegrape]

Yeah, that would be good. Also, if they do something really cool/awesome, they can get "the Supermancool" after their patronymical/matromynical name.

[Footkerchief]

You do know the game already does this to some extent, right?  In particular, it does group words by symbolic association -- check out /raw/objects/language_SYM.txt, and the SELECT_SYMBOL tags in entity_default.txt.  This causes goblins to have names like evil names like "Hateincests" and dwarves to have names that suggest artifice and earthiness.

Biasing the RNG toward (or away from) words related to specific circumstances would be cool.

The use of creature names has some particular hassles, I think -- i.e. each time you add a creature, you'd also have to name that creature in each language and add it to the language files, which means the creature definition is kind of smeared out over a bunch of files instead of being neatly compartmentalized.  Not insurmountable, though.

[Warlord255]

It would even be good to identify dwarves by their first name only, until they have earned their second name. That means, when they do something extraordinary as warrior, craftsman, in social situations or in another way; they would get an appropriate random name, eg. marmotslayer, swelter, the fiery scolder, etc.

I do this manually with nicknames.

This has led to great dwarves such as Kikrost Backbreaker and Kib Thunderfist the Regenerating.

[SirHoneyBadger]

In my fiction writing, I use the following naming convention:

First name,

Any possible nickname,

Surname (which only immediate family, including grandparents, will share--if they don't have any living immediate family, the surname is omitted. Aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters can have different surnames, if they take their spouse's name. The spouse will then change *their* surname to their occupation. All children will inherit the surname of the parent with the occupation. So if Sally Jones marries Tom Berry, and Sally's a baker while Tom is a peasant, then Tom's last name will become Jones, and Sally's last name will become Baker. Their kids will have the last name Jones. If both parents have an occupation, they will both change their surnames to their respective occupations, and it is then permissible for any children to choose a surname of their liking, from the two (typically, the name that's been around the longest is chosen), or to create a new surname. Apprentices with no family name of their own may also adopt the surname of their masters, if their master doesn't have any children of their own, and gives permission.),

Family name (which will be-or obviously reflect- one of their parents' occupation. Sally and Tom's kid will have the surname Jones, and the family name Baker. The child of a peasant, an orphan, or a slave, will have no family name.),

Clan name (made up of two nouns--when a new King/Queen comes into power, the King/Queen takes one of the nouns from their name, and one of the nouns from their spouse's name, and forms a new Clan. Their children will become part of that new Clan. This ensures that all Clans are technically of equal political standing, since they all are of the blood of Kings/Queens. This also helps check the power of older, more established Clans, as well as the power of the King/Queen, since they'll now be the head of, and genesis of, the newest-and politically weakest-new Clan, with no legal ties to their original Clans, and nothing binding them to any other Clan, or any other Clan to them.). The Clan name is considered the most important name, but can politely be omitted in introductions. Clans never intermarry, though, and never marry anyone who shares one of the nouns in their name. Only dwarfs who don't actually know their Clan name, don't belong to a Clan, and if such a dwarf marries another dwarf with a Clan name, the Clan typically adopts them--although they'll investigate to find the dwarf's true Clan, if it seems possible to do so. No married dwarf ever lacks a Clan name, either their original one, a new one (in the case of royalty), or their adopted one. Marriage can't legally occur between dwarfs without both possessing a Clan name.

and then Fortress name (which can be either the Fortress the dwarf is living in now, or the Fortress they were born in, the choice being up to the dwarf in question.), which is never omitted, unless the dwarf has never actually lived in a Fortress.

[Granite26]

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