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[Scoops Novel]

Often people were named after where they came from, or defining traits (such as Julius, which according to one interpretation originally meant "downy-bearded", yes it's why i made the thread). I admit i don't know too much of the ins and outs but i'd love it if all the names had rhyme and reason rather then being plucked from the ether.

[smjjames]

But the silly names is part of the fun of DF.

[Scoops Novel]

But the silly names is part of the fun of DF.

Why not both? The names are in character for a bunch of drunks. Perhaps there could be some outlandish names at world gen for spice, or it could be optional.

[Aranador]

I am just a little confused as to how you know what is 'realistic' for naming conventions for dwarves, elves, dragons, and piles of sentient quartz that have killed half a dozen citizens.

[Dirst]

DF puts more thought into names than most games, though it does have its quirks (each individual has a first and last name completely independent of any relatives' names).  Other than wrangling families into a single surname, more realistic names probably aren't worth the considerable effort required until much later in the development pipeline.

You would need a slew of entity tags to determine how given names and family names are determined.  Each type of name (profession-based, hometown-based, awesome-sounding-concept-based, celebrity-based, etc.) would require supporting tags in the language files, so that the game understands that Farmer and Field and Planter and Harvester and Plow and so on all relate to a single profession, and that masculine/feminine/neuter names form consistently.  And a lot of this would be invisible to the player since Toady's Dwarven culture seems the sort that would use unisex names anyway.

[dwarf_reform]

Odd that I hadn't ever really paid attention about dwarven families having separate last names That wouldn't be a bad change, giving a shared last name, or maybe giving each family a crest or something similar to the in-game dwarven group/government names.. Something like, "Urist McFeels and Gurlist McChills founded The Axe of Claws in 339. The Axe of Claws has 719 deceased members and 24 living, born over 68 generations." along with a full list of the family, preferably in real-world family tree format if at all possible..

Also, some minor exterior indicator showing whether a dwarf is male or female would be somewhat handy.. Its a strange comparison, but it'd be like if all the books in the world were suddenly male or female, but you had to pick up each one and flip to page 171, third line, to find out what the sex was, when you could just stick a small blue or pink mark on the cover :> It would be hard to create strictly female dwarven names with the current setup, which is over 2000 real-world words and their 'dwarven' counterparts, where any 3 are picked in a '1 23' format.. At the very least you'd need to be able to flag a word as 'first name only', male or female only, and being able to assign a word as last-name-only along with choosing if it is a front compound or back compound would be very helpful as well.. We'd end up with dwarf-equivalents of Johnson Susankate and Jeremy Gailcourtney with the current setup :>

The shared last name or lineage and a proper 'family tree' page would take a lot of the hard work out of tracking a bloodline for storytelling, and would also allow dwarven full-family feuds and grudges, which could lead to some interesting fort layouts (and giant bloodbaths, as it should be!)..

[SixOfSpades]

Offhand, I'd say that it would be an improvement to make each dwarf's last name be the combination of both of their parent's first names, with the older parent's name coming before the younger.

I would also like it if battle titles paid at least some attention to the dwarf's actual manner of achieving kills. I mean, my duke has over 500 notable kills with his pick, and a handful with his shield, and yet his title translates to "the Immortal Stale Noose-Tournament of Straps." Huh? That would make sense if his preferred weapon was the garrote, I suppose . . .

[Aranador]

I dunno - sounds like an awesome name to me.

[Scoops Novel]

Anyone know much about historical examples? I imagine clan could come into it, right?

[Tekkud the Farmer]

Other than wrangling families into a single surname, more realistic names probably aren't worth the considerable effort required until much later in the development pipeline.

I vote for the idea of having consistent family names as well. It sounds very easy to implement too; no additional data required to track anything, just determine the surname at birth and let it stick, simple as that.

Gender-specific names will be nice too, as are words that are specifically reserved for dwarven names only. (Since stuff like "Susan" and "Antony" aren't proper words in modern English as well.) They shouldn't require too much effort either, just some additional vocab and some tags for the words in the language files.

Apart from that, if I were Toady, I wouldn't bother to make realistic-sounding surnames. Just doesn't seem worth the huge effort.

[SixOfSpades]

Gender-specific names will be nice too, as are words that are specifically reserved for dwarven names only. (Since stuff like "Susan" and "Antony" aren't proper words in modern English as well.) They shouldn't require too much effort either, just some additional vocab and some tags for the words in the language files.

Personally, I'm against the idea of adding to the dwarf language until a (very bored and very dedicated) linguist gives the existing Language_Dwarf.txt an extremely thorough going-over and gives the dwarf tongue an organized set of rules. Ideally, related words should be seen to have a common root, you could tell a noun from an adjective at a glance, all of the verbs would have regular conjugations, etc. Adding gender to the language could be a part of that major overhaul, certainly, but in my opinion it shouldn't come before it.

[Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum]

Offhand, I'd say that it would be an improvement to make each dwarf's last name be the combination of both of their parent's first names, with the older parent's name coming before the younger.

This actually sounds like something that would be interesting.

And having male/female names doesn't sound very dwarven, I always assumed they mostly ignore gender.

[Sirbug]

Everyone ignores gender currently.

[Dyret]

Gender-specific names will be nice too, as are words that are specifically reserved for dwarven names only. (Since stuff like "Susan" and "Antony" aren't proper words in modern English as well.) They shouldn't require too much effort either, just some additional vocab and some tags for the words in the language files.

All of this. Who the hell names their kid 'dagger' anyway?

[Sirbug]

I think dwarves should keep weird names. Maybe splitting them in easily recognizeable gender patterns like ending male names with consonant and female with vowel.
Humans should have real world names. I think there should be libraries of names by culture and during worldgen each civ would get its own. So we would play and see that Robert, Svyatoslav and Akhmed are from different civs.
Elves and goblins, IMHO, should have meaningful names. For elves - names related to nature, trees, peaceful animals (how disgusting) and for goblins - names related to violence, weapon, evil etc.
Kobolds should just have lame names
Demons, beasts should have long weird names like they currently do.

It would be nice to have some relevance in nicknames, but firsrt there should be more nominal awards.