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[NW_Kohaku]

Well, now, here's a necro.  Nice job snagging this one from the dustbin.

It does seem a little odd that Toady hasn't found time to pull this one off, yet, and I've seen talk recently on the subject of tracing family trees.

I don't think wives taking husband names or vice versa should be random so much as it should be a cultural thing (like an entity raw setting so that you can make societies with one or the other).  It could also just wind up with sons having the father's last name and daughters having the mother's last name, but no last name change happening to the married couple.  (Or civ-based naming, so you could have sons named after their mother and daughters named after their father if you wanted that.)

[Spish]

I think it should still be randomly generated, but based on the spheretypes in the parentses names. Like if the mother is Deadskull and the father is Stonemine, then the child's name will be something like Murderrocks.

[Richards]

Hey. So yes I agree. Since this is a game I suppose that three settings would be nice to have in a fort for you to choose from; one for patronymic naming, one for matronymic naming, and a dwarven option where children are named after their most proficient or most famous/successful parent. I updated the Eternal Suggestions box to how I think it should be. It's more sensible now.

Family trees would also be nice to see in-game.

[Gotdamnmiracle]

There should also be a degree of randomness to it. Like losing a last name or being crowned another (as if becoming a noble or champion or elite.)

Also I think first names should be random but with weight on the parents skills and a civilizations "celebrities". If you have an adventure that kills a whole bunch of beasties named Vanod there will be a lot of tiny Vanods running about. This will only last for like 10 or 15 years or so. The fame will eventually wane.

[Baijiu]

I really wish there were inheritable names in DF. It'd make it easier to track families in Fortress Mode, and give fortresses a more personal feel.

The name system should expanded though, because with only two names families would quickly become huge. Perhaps give each dwarf three or more names with maybe the extra names being hidden or something or only viewable through the relations screen.  A general given name, and multiple bloodline names? Maybe go the scottish route and have important dwarven clans, with each clan having different septs (sort of like mini-clans inside bigger clans).

Also, arranged marriages should be added. Then we could finally start breeding dwarves!

Maybe I've been playing too much Crusader Kings II. >_>

[Richards]

Yea.

[HammerHand]

I really wish there were inheritable names in DF. It'd make it easier to track families in Fortress Mode, and give fortresses a more personal feel.

The name system should expanded though, because with only two names families would quickly become huge. Perhaps give each dwarf three or more names with maybe the extra names being hidden or something or only viewable through the relations screen.  A general given name, and multiple bloodline names? Maybe go the scottish route and have important dwarven clans, with each clan having different septs (sort of like mini-clans inside bigger clans).

Also, arranged marriages should be added. Then we could finally start breeding dwarves!

Maybe I've been playing too much Crusader Kings II. >_>

This, sir (or madam) sounds like a step in the direction of clans.  Which may or may not be too stereotypical dwarven behavior for Toady.

Sounds awesome to me, though.

On the other hand... maybe that's what the Group Name is all about?  Hm.

[breadman]

I'm for the entity file flag.  One wrinkle is that there are two axes of naming that are almost independent.  Not always do the parents change their name upon marriage, even when the children take a family name.  Perhaps we want two flags:

[MARRIAGENAME:PATRONYM:40:MATRONYM:40:RANDOM:10]
[CHILDNAME:PATRONYM:40:MATRONYM:40]

The MARRIAGENAME tag indicates how, and whether, individuals change their surname when getting married.  My example doesn't add up to 100; any leftover percentage points should go to the default setting, KEEP.

I considered various ways of combining each of the three words of each parent's name (one in the first name, two in the surname), before noticing that the language file has certain rules about what words can appear where.  Immortality, for example, might only be allowed as the first word of a compound noun.  That limits the number of possibilities significantly, unless we come up with more ways to decide on one of the names:

• PATRONYM: Take the father's surname.
• MATRONYM: Take the mother's surname.
• PATMAT: Take the first part of the father's surname, and the last part of the mother's surname.
• MATPAT: Take the first part of the mother's surname, and the last part of the father's surname.
• HIGHSKILL: Take the surname of the most skilled parent.
• RANDOM: Roll an entirely new random surname.
• KEEP: Parents keep their own surnames (MARRIAGENAME only).
• FUSENAME: Parents hyphenate or otherwise use both of their surnames (MARRIAGENAME only).

I would not be surprised to see FUSENAME remain unimplemented at first, because it's the most complicated.  Ideally, it would keep track of each parent's surname individually, for child name calculations, while combining them on display.  Historically, such a system has been far more common among royalty or other high-class citizens than among the common members of a civilization, so I don't care too much about it.

The CHILDNAME tag indicates how each child's surname is generated.  The default here would be RANDOM, to match current behavior.  Note that with a MARRIAGENAME of anything but KEEP or FUSENAME, and a CHILDNAME of anything but RANDOM, each listed algorithm degrades to giving the child the same surname as the parents.

I considered a BY_CASTE algorithm for CHILDNAME, but that runs into problems if the castes are not strictly male and female.  It can also be rendered obsolete by making CHILDNAME a caste-level token.  For example, a civ could have male children prefer to take their father's surname, while female children prefer their mother's.  Or perhaps, in a mod with a nobility caste, the noble children use a different method than the commoners.

Using MARRIAGENAME as a caste-level token could be problematic, though, because there can be (and usually are) two castes involved.  It's tempting to have each one list a percentage to switch to the partner's surname, but then what if a couple decides to swap names?  Does that make sense for any civilization?

On the other hand, maybe I'm making the whole thing too complicated.

[NW_Kohaku]

[MARRIAGENAME:PATRONYM:40:MATRONYM:40:RANDOM:10]
[CHILDNAME:PATRONYM:40:MATRONYM:40]

There's no reason to make the modders repeat the PATRONYM part, as that's just a title for the actual argument being entered.

What you'd actually see would be [MARRIAGENAME:40:40:10].  Or rather, since Toady prefers weights, [MARRIAGENAME:4:4:1:1] would be more likely, with a comment on it saying the first number is male name, second is female name, third is random, and last is "keep".  (Or add as many arguments on to the end of that as it takes to cover all the bases.)

Likewise, children would get [CHILDNAME:2:2:1] with that being "Father's name", "Mother's name", and "unique last name". 

FUSENAME would be very problematic - the name would be too long in most cases to be properly displayed, and it raises problems because then, the fused name is what gets passed down in generations... I'd hate to see what that name would look like 10 generations down the road if there was a civ that was purely FUSENAME...

I would suggest, however, that there might be something more like "GENDERNAME", where [MALE] castes are named after the male parent, and all other castes are named after the female parent (in the oddball case where you have genderless castes).  That would avoid messy caste-level definitions in the raws. 

Still, this would basically be setting up for cultures that don't have very strong traditions on how they name people.  You don't see these kinds of nearly 50-50 splits among any real-life culture, even discounting that most are patriarchal to begin with.  You would more likely see something like a 99% chance of a child having the father's name, with only a few oddball outliers. 

[Starver]

It's tempting to have each one list a percentage to switch to the partner's surname, but then what if a couple decides to swap names?  Does that make sense for any civilization?

I could see it.  Shows a commitment to each other, etc.  It'd have to be a culture that particularly prized relationships above personal identity, perhaps.

On the other hand, maybe I'm making the whole thing too complicated.

I like it.  Which probably means "Yes, you are".

There's no reason to make the modders repeat the PATRONYM part, as that's just a title for the actual argument being entered.

I thought the idea was any abitrary number of different possibilities and each appropriate percentages (or weighting!).  So it's simpler (and, incidentally, more readable...) than [MARRIAGENAME:40:40:0:0:0:10:10:0] where the values strictly relate to {PATRONYM, MATRONYM, PATMAT, MATPAT, HIGHSKILL, RANDOM, KEEP, FUSENAME}, and is already ungainly.

It's also easier to (at a later date) add in "...:RULERHONOURED:10", or something else that's new (in this case, go for a 10-percent/10-unit-weighted chance of plumping for the clan's lord's name in order to show/pretend loyalty, or something).  Otherwise you'd have to ensure you were zero-value buffered all the way up to where it can recognise the 9th parameter as being this new item, the tenth as the next one added after that, etc.

But that's just my read on it.


As for FUSENAME, I'd have looked for parents called Alphabeta and Gammadelta to randomly go for Alphadelta or Gammabeta.  Maybe that's a different Fusename.

Of course, I know it probably would get ungainly in words (it's very much so in pictures!) but there are plenty of examples of coats of arms bearing the complex ancestries beyond ancestries.

Spoiler: Like this one (click to show/hide)

(And I can't find the extremely complex example that first came to mind, that one's simple, relatively!)

[NW_Kohaku]

No, the MatPat and PatMat name types had the "mix-and-match" already.

What he was talking about with FUSENAME was naming the characters "AlphaBetaGammaDelta"... and again, double that every generation (including a name that might well have some more "AlphaBeta" in there as distant cousins start marrying), and you'd wind up with a name with a thousand conjoined words within 10 generations.

I guess the hair colors from the creature raws would already support the ":TYPE:WEIGHT" style of arguments, and it gives more room to add in more stuff later if Toady really wants to start allowing really crazy things to happen.

(And when you're messing with a whole bunch of different numbers, weighting is definitely easier to deal with.)

[Nonsequitorian]

It's tempting to have each one list a percentage to switch to the partner's surname, but then what if a couple decides to swap names?  Does that make sense for any civilization?

I could see it.  Shows a commitment to each other, etc.  It'd have to be a culture that particularly prized relationships above personal identity, perhaps.

On the other hand, maybe I'm making the whole thing too complicated.

I like it.  Which probably means "Yes, you are".

There's no reason to make the modders repeat the PATRONYM part, as that's just a title for the actual argument being entered.

I thought the idea was any abitrary number of different possibilities and each appropriate percentages (or weighting!).  So it's simpler (and, incidentally, more readable...) than [MARRIAGENAME:40:40:0:0:0:10:10:0] where the values strictly relate to {PATRONYM, MATRONYM, PATMAT, MATPAT, HIGHSKILL, RANDOM, KEEP, FUSENAME}, and is already ungainly.

I like that last bit, but I think if it is like this, it should be a constant for the family, so all dwarves in family X have PATRONYM chosen and all in family Y have PATMAT chosen. It'd make a lot of sense like that.

The only way I think this last name would change and make sense is having one of two things:

1 A dwarf in the line becomes a named figure. Urist McDwarf, the Hammer of Silver should have all his children have the last name Tilatnilral (child of the hammer of silver) or Bushosnilral (spawn of the hammer of silver), or even just Tilatnil or Bushosnil. One could have Tilat be traditionally used for a male and Bushos for a female, as a way to show a heritage culture or the like.

2 A dwarf who becomes a highmaster or legendary anything (save for mining, because that is just so easy to become legendary in) would have his last name changed to his profession and his last name become his title. This would be like Urist Tilatnilral the Craftsdwarf becoming Urist Craftsdwarf the Child of the Hammer of Silver. The title might be able to change, so that the Child of the Hammer of Silver may become Amazing Craftsdwarf or the like. In this way dwarfs would be renamed and start to gain a kind of history that we could read straight from the names. Any dwarf worth dwarfing about would have a name which would define them and their ancestors. We may have Urist McSwordsman, the Seventh Son of the Adamant Sword.

All this could lead to having children who are predisposed to a certain job. Mörul Weaponsmith the Spawn of Weaponsmith may have a daughter who starts out as a decent weaponsmith. This could turn into an actual gene-esque system. Urist McPerfectFighter/Weaponsmith/Miner/Everything has a son who is almost instantly good at everything and is fit and healthy and tough, while Urist McStupid/Shallow/Selfabsorbed/Farmer has a son who is only decent at farming and has tons of grudges and a wife who doesn't take his last name even though he is part of a PATRONYM family (it would be because he has so many grudges that his wife doesn't actually like him). We could breed dwarves. We could create the perfect race of dwarven perfection.

If Urist McSucksateverything has a daughter who forms a grudge against her own father, maybe that drives her into becoming something better, so Urist McSucksatfighting's daughter is a legendary fighter who suddenly takes the name Kel Warrior or Kel Fighter. Even maybe a title, Kel Fighter the Paternal Spite. Suddenly a former PATRONYM tag turns into a MATRONYM and things change for the family.

Or we could end up with a bunch of booze-wastes that take up space and beds and don't do anything but farm.

I dunno just letting my mind ramble on

[Starver]

No, the MatPat and PatMat name types had the "mix-and-match" already.

Yes, I realised that after posting ("FUSENAME2:X" would have been a mere shortcut for "MATPAT:X/2:PATMAT:X/2"), but it wasn't my main point, so thought you'd be all kind enough to overlook it.  Knowing that I probably wouldn't, roles reversed, I see where I went wrong there...

(And didn't you get the analogy with the shield?  I understood the original FUSENAME for what it was...)

[NW_Kohaku]

(And didn't you get the analogy with the shield?  I understood the original FUSENAME for what it was...)

Yes, and that's why I said it was a problem - the game is simply not going to be able to print out a string with 7,000 characters in it on a space with room for 16 characters. 

For that matter, no human could read it if they could.

[Starver]

Of course, I know it probably would get ungainly in words [..]

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