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[Gimmick Account]

I've noticed that the past few versions (actually, starting from whenever the last huge name addition happened) have very frequent instances of name/gender mismatches. Just to take one example, 'Hillary' shows up on the list of available male names.

I know I've asked this before, back when you didn't have any other programmers to help you out, but is it really not possible to externalize the list to a file so that it can be easily modified?

[Leafsnail]

Man, is this whole thread just a dig at Hilary Ben?

I guess it is usually spelt differently as a male name though.

[Gimmick Account]

No, it isn't a dig, and I've seen a bunch of other, clearly exclusively female names just as I was generating a new character about an hour ago.

[Stargrasper]

Are you sure moving them out of the code would make much of a difference?  Within the code, the names are stored in tables separated as Male, Female, and Gender-Neutral names.

I think you just have a different kind of idea of what a gender-neutral name is.  Here's a list of gender-neutral names according to the source code.

Code: [Select]

Akira
Alex
Alexis
Angel
Ariel
Ashley
Billy
Frankie
Hillary
Kelly
Jackie
Jamie
Jo
Jun
Kelsey
Kelsie
Kim
Lesley
Leslie
Morgan
Nicky
Noel
Page
Paige
Pat
Raven
Riley
Robin
Sam
Sandy
Sidney
Taylor
Terry
Yanping

Default (for error catching purposes)

Some of these are more commonly male or female names, but none of them are exclusive to one or the other sex.  I'm willing to bet every name you have a problem with is in this list.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Stargrasper has the right of it. The gender specific name lists are pretty solid, and I doubt there are any mismatches in them. Any incongruity is probably from the loose criteria for inclusion in the unisex name list, which is appended to both male and female name lists when generating characters. Personally, it doesn't bother me that the unisex list is pretty aggressive; people mismatch name and gender in the real world on occasion, and as Leafsnail's example shows, even names that seem to be only formerly unisex are still used as such on occasion. "Hillary" is still an odd example because that spelling isn't usually used for men; the choice of spelling is a reference to Hillary Clinton. There's an argument to be made that it should either be split into Hilary and Hillary or just moved to the female name list.

[Gimmick Account]

What about 'Paige', 'Jackie' and 'Jamie'? All of these seem VERY female to my non-American ears. Especially if they end with the letters 'ie' and have another version of the same name that doesn't on the list.

Oh well, it'll just be one of those things for me, like my failed campaign to get a juice buffer for Elite Liberals implemented. Nothing that'll ruin the game, I mean.

[Gimmick Account]

...and there's definitely at least a typo in 'Racheal', in the list of female-only names. Just found this out.

[Capital Fish]

I was the person who submitted the currently used list of names to Jonathan to be included in LCS, so any mistakes regarding the names are likely my fault.

That said, I did make efforts (Wikipedia counts as effort, right?) to confirm that the names were correctly spelled and were assigned to the correct genders before submitting them to Fox.

I've personnally known males named both Jackie and Jamie, and while I've never met any males named Paige or Hillary/Hilary, Wikipedia confirms that, while they are more commonly given to females, they are considered unisex names.

As for the misspelling of "Racheal", Wikipedia (again) confirms that it is a valid alternate spelling.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

What about 'Paige', 'Jackie' and 'Jamie'? All of these seem VERY female to my non-American ears. Especially if they end with the letters 'ie' and have another version of the same name that doesn't on the list.

Paige is predominantly female today, but is historically male (a "page" is a chiefly male position). Jackie and Jamie are pet names for Jack and James, respectively, and are very much in mixed use:

Paige Kreegel
Jackie Chan
Jamie Hyneman

...and there's definitely at least a typo in 'Racheal', in the list of female-only names. Just found this out.

The name list actually has three different spellings for Rachel/Rachael/Racheal. People who have the name Racheal suffer the burden of everyone always spelling their name wrong -- or worse yet, accusing them of spelling their own name wrong! -- but they still exist. For comparison, there are four ways to spell Jonathan/Jonathon/Johnathan/Johnathon. Obviously, the latter three are wrong.

[Gimmick Account]

Well, I tried.

Too bad Liberal Crime Squad doesn't do name 'weights' like Europa Universalis 3 does for its monarchs. That would enable a whole lot of very exotic names without things constantly getting bizarre.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Yeah, that would be pretty cool. It would also make census data more usable.

[EuchreJack]

Eh, I like my liberals to have unique names.  I like to think their activism stems from being picked on for having "wierd" or "wrong-gender" names all their lives.   

[Gimmick Account]

Eh, I like my liberals to have unique names.  I like to think their activism stems from being picked on for having "wierd" or "wrong-gender" names all their lives.   

Things like ideology could be respected in the 'weightings'. The problem here is that not just the liberals, but EVERYONE has crazy ass names - Even the highest-placed politicians in an arch-conservative, racist society. Imagine how much worse the situation would become if you just included even more exotic names without considering their actual proliferation in the real world.

[Reelyanoob]

I have less of a problem with "cross-gender names" (many of those names vary gender throughout places, and history) than i do with dating a male who turn out to be female or vice-versa. Is it just randomly re-rolled when they arrive for the date, or are these actually meant to be trans-gender people?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I can't think of a reason it would change. The game does track a "Liberal" and "Conservative" gender, which are on rare occasions different. In theory, both the dating screen and the on-site info should use the Liberal gender; the LCS doesn't really care what Conservative society says about people.