I’ve been spending a bit of time working on a random name generator for my WIP. It’s a fantasy magic type of game, and I think this works.
It’s based on letter frequencies and word conventions in the English language, and can easily be adapted to other languages if necessary. The names it generates do generally sound fantasy-like, but there are a instances which make no sense.
So if you’d like to take a look, be sure to drop some of your favourite names here, or point out odd things that really should be fixed.
Sure! Keep in mind that these aren’t pre-programmed names. They’re generated using english word conventions and letter frequencies, but we can ‘influence’ which kinds of names appear more often.
In this case, for example, if there is ever an instance where ‘fb’ appears in a name, it will be deleted and replaced.
We can certainly look at names we like and try to increase the chance that similar names appear.
I got Tempe on one of my generation, which is pretty fun
In case you don't know
Tempe is this
I took the liberty to peek your code, and I must say, this generator is a legit generator, not recalling from database or somesuch.
One suggestion from me is to allow double vowel to be a thing. Because, you know, Szaal?
Other suggestions is to allow a “first letter preference,” so we can input something like “I’d like a name starting with X.” The engine then looks whether it’s a vowel or not, etc. etc.
Of course, that is sensible. Double vowels should be a thing, but for now, given the likelihood of ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ (mostly 'oo’s appear incredibly frequently for some reason - probably some sort of Gauss distribution, but I’m not sure. I don’t know exactly how *rand works and there is that eternal debate), generated words become rather silly rather quickly.
I do plan on incorporating diphthongs and vowel combinations in the future, so I’ll keep double vowels in mind as well. Thanks.
Tempe looks like peanut cookie. I think I want one?
Fun fact, it’s peanut!
Soybeans, in that case. Fried, fermented soybeans, because if you fry unfermented soybeans, you’ll get gravel-crunchy-beans.
Depending on how you cook it, a tempe can be crispy on the outside, but soft on the inside. Some version of tempe is fermented-for-a-good-time that when you eat them, there’s like… this hissing gas taste inside your mouth, which is pretty fun.
Pretty cool generator! may I ask how you plan on using it? Just going to get ideas to name your characters, or will it be included inside your game in some capacity?
I find most names are currently too random for my tastes, and my favourites have ended up being short ones that randomly happen to be real words XD … like Dew, Nut, Pie, Hue, Ace, Pal, Roe, Coed… I even got Nate once!
Some nice ones that came up after repeated tries:
Etren
U’uvoisbo
Hesus
Anislata
Hervogel
Granted, it’s very ambitious, but it’s been an ambitious project from the start, and I think it promises a very unique experience on every playthrough.
Also, Hervogel sounds like the German for “Sir Bird”, which would be a peculiar character.
Wow, you are really pushing the limits of ChoiceScript here, in a great way! I’ve written a lot of name generators over the years, sometimes using cryptographic frequencies, and i’ve also tried deconstructing syllables from given words. It’s fun stuff…
Screening out bad combos is good, but actually creating consonant pairs helps too: “rs” “th” “wr” but not “ht”, “sr” “rw” … there’s a lot more known good ones than randomly-arranged bad ones, and you can assign frequencies to those as well.
Ah yes. I’ve dabbled before and I remember having some sort of filter that extracts syllables and checks to see if they make sa=ense. I honestly don’t remember how, but the hope is that I can recreate that.
Ultimately, I’d like to get rid of any sort of need for this screening, but I’m kinda stumped at the moment.
But no worries, that’s just the machine expressing it’s eternal rage. It’s good to let it out sometimes (i.e. I don’t know what it is and I don’t know how to fix it, so I’m ignoring it forever - let’s call it an ultra-rare feature).