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[Richards]

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I was curious about the current system where every dwarf born to the fortress has it's own uniquely generated full name like it is it's own person or a migrant. I'd like to propose that there should be a distinguishable last name for each dwarf which wives should adopt from their husbands in marriage, and children retain from the Fathers. This would give more of a sense of family and finally allow us to see whose related just from looking at last names. You could live out the continuation of a dwarf from his son in this manner.

[tsen]

Family trees would be fun. 8"}

[Dae]

Family trees would be fun. 8"}

As in, hanging every dwarf in a family hung in the same tree ? How friendly !

Considering suggestion, why would the mother lose her name ? Why would the child have his name from his father ?
Let's generate this behaviour based on the civilisation. It wouldn't be difficult to change how names are generated at birth/marriage depending on a flag located in the civ :
- wife takes husband name
- husband takes wife name
- both add each other name to theirs (dangerous after 6 marriages, unless thay don't add the complete name but one of them)
- both earn a new name ?
- child takes father's name, or mother's (or grandmother ? uncle ? dog ? no, not dog.)

We could juggle with these and have pretty interesting results, well, as fair as names go.
Also, I support the idea of a family tree screen somewhere in the legends and dwarf mode.

[Sensei]

I think this is already on the 'to do' list as a gameplay and worldgen feature.

Oh, and sometimes a dwarf should change their last name, so all the 50 dwarves who are generated at worldgen don't have children with 50 last names (assuming daughters inherit the mother's name and sons to inherit their father's) dominate the entirety of your world.

Maybe they'll choose something awesome when they slay a dragon or make a new name if they come to feud with their ancestors. Monarchs might also grant title-esque surnames to dwarves of great accomplishment (most legendaries?).

[Rose]

There's also naming by profession:

Uric Smith

and by father's first name:

Uric, Son of Cog.

[Rowanas]

since dwarves get names for multiple named kills, legendary crafters should get new names, and those would be the names that are passed on. no more crappy Urist McDwarf, if a legend has a kid, they should be Urist McAWESOMEUNIQUENAME.

[Sutremaine]

Dwarves should take their names from whichever parent has the highest skill level. Skills should also be weighted so that Urist McChatterbox isn't chosen as namer over Urist McSmith, but I'm not sure how that would be done. A standard list would be easiest.

[Deimos56]

I support the suggestion to have the name picking process be decided by an entity file entry. Perhaps with some modifier to give a chance of variation from civilization to civilization. One dwarven civilization ("The Hall of Daggers") might have married couples and children take the male dwarf's last name, whereas another ("The Corridor of Hammers") might ensure that the highest skilled of the two is the one whose family name is inherited.

So, the entity flag might look like:
[MARRIAGENAME:MALEPREF:75:25]
Indicating that usually the entity will prefer the male dwarf's last name, but 25% of the civs spawned by the entity will prefer... some other one.

Alternatively, we could get more specific, but that would lead to some long... long... flags.
[MARRIAGENAME:MALEPREF:20:FEMALEPREF:20:HIGHSKILL:35:
RANDOMNAME:10:FUSENAME:10:URISTMCNEWFAMILY:5]

So, what Dae said except with something of a random element.

[Heron TSG]

Dwarves should take their names from whichever parent has the highest skill level. Skills should also be weighted so that Urist McChatterbox isn't chosen as namer over Urist McSmith, but I'm not sure how that would be done. A standard list would be easiest.

this.

[tsen]

I'm personally in favor of a more robust system like Deimos suggests.

[Starver]

- child takes father's name, or mother's (or grandmother ? uncle ? dog ? no, not dog.)

Sallah: Please, what does it always mean, this... this "Junior"?
Professor Henry Jones: That's his name.
[points to himself]
Professor Henry Jones: Henry Jones...
[points to Indy]
Professor Henry Jones: ...Junior.
Indiana Jones: I like "Indiana."
Professor Henry Jones: We named the *dog* Indiana.
Marcus Brody: May we go home now, please?
Sallah: The dog?
[starts laughing]
Sallah: You are named after the dog? HA HA HA...!
Indiana Jones: I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog.

[Craftling]

There's also naming by profession:

Uric Smith

and by father's first name:

Uric, Son of Cog.

And Uric Cogsson

[Starver]

There's also naming by profession:

Uric Smith

and by father's first name:

Uric, Son of Cog.

And Uric Cogsson

If implementing familial surnames, do you use Cogsson (or Cogdottir) from the Icelandic/scandiwegian for the Nordics, McCog/MacCog and of course O'Cog from the various C-Celtics, "ap Cog" from Welsh..?  Depending on your view of the pseudoethnicity of Dwarfs, all of these might fit, so maybe you assign a single system to each civilisation...  You can also extend out to the bin/ibn (also  'ben'), -vich, Fitz- and various other dimminutive suffixes from Arabic (and israeli), Russian, Francish and the likes of Ancient Greek, respectively.

I think (ICBW) that in the Indian patronimic system, the forename of the father is directly adopted as the latter name of the son, with no other element.  This would avoid the need of shoehorning features of Real World familial naming suffices and prefices into the Dwarven-language nameset.  Given that (prior to battle-earned extra names) the pattern of a Dwarven name is Word Wordword, perhaps the "Wordword" could be derived from "Fathermother"'s firstname words (or, indeed, "Motherfather"'s, according to relative superiority, rank, skill-level or social ability).  In a formal system, it could extend to "Cog Cogcog (Cogcog-Cogcog)" or something (for a particularly unimaginative pair of bloodlines meeting and remaining consistently unimaginative) to represent greater depth of descendence.  The data (at least for extant relatives and major family lines) appears to exist within the gameiverse histories, so it could be a special occasion thing, when high level diplomats and rulers meet, to greet each other by the full bloodline, or as full as they can/wish to use under the circumstances, thus not always to spend five hours before uttering the words "...I send you greetings from my Lord, ..." and then another five hours before "...on this auspicious day."

In some ways this would be quite similar to various cultures (at least at the highest levels of aristocratic seniority) here on Earth.  Just a speculative idea, of course.

[Richards]

To address those with the idea of the wife's name being carried on, I'm not sure why you'd want that. The sons inherit their father's name anywhere in civilized history (unless I'm unaware of a few instances), and his sons continue on the family heritage.

For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. As it's written in scripture.

I added this to Eternal voting

[Heron TSG]

That was pretty sexist.

Anyways, I think it should go by which dwarf is more awesome.