Apologies in advance if there's already a topic about this, but "name" is too common a term to search for. The random names for humans seem a little.... well kinda really WASP-y :/ I understand this game is being developed in England, but given that humans come from many different places, and also this is the far future, it kinda doesn't make sense to have all the names coming out of the random generator sound like they came from Britain and Britain alone. It'd make a lot more sense to see names from other cultures come out of the generator as well (it wouldn't hurt to see names like Wang and Chekov alongside names such as Wilson). And it's not like it has to be super diverse, but a few samples from a lot of places would be kinda nice, as opposed to a bunch of samples from one place. The only other alternative I can think of is making up names that don't fit any naming schemes found on earth, kinda like the names you might find in Star Wars (Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, etc.). Being the far future, and Humans scattered throughout the stars, it's not at all a stretch to see new languages, and therefore new names, to be the norm. Which brings me to my second issue, the fact that all non-human names aren't terribly name-like :/ Yeah okay, they're going with the "literal name translation" kind of thing, which I guess is okay if it were confined to like one or two species, but all 5 non-human species get names like this. I feel like it might work for, say, the Glitch, they are an artificially created species with a strange way of talking, and the Apex have a revolutionarily created culture, so they may also have a way of naming themselves that would feel weird to us. The problem though is it's just really silly. My name irl is Daniel, but I wouldn't introduce myself as "God is [My] Shepherd" in other languages (as an additional note, "Daniel" is a name from Hebrew, transliterated, not translated into English). I think there should be time given to creating name or name compounds that would sound distinctive for each race. I mean if they can do it for other sci-fi franchises, I'm pretty sure it can happen for Starbound. Pre-FAQ ('cause I know I'm probably gonna get questions like this) Can't they just use "exotic" sounding human names for non-human races? No, because those are still very much human names. I know other races' cultures take cues from older cultures found on Earth, but most people today would fall under how Humans are represented in Starbound. Not to mention it's quite offensive to shove those names in the non-human category when there are humans with those names in the real world.* I mean really, I'm pretty sure there are more Wangs than Smiths in this world, and current trends don't suggest a change otherwise. Wouldn't this make it harder to program? I can't imagine so? I'm not a programmer, so take that with a grain of salt, but given that there are lists of most common surnames on Wikipedia and the internet in general, it can't be too hard to replace the current naming scheme with a single or double surname one, i.e. we'd see names like just Williams, or Yamada-Gorbachev. I dunno, in a future world I can't see how this might be an issue. Can't they just make the human lore say they all came from one place on Earth/have a single culture? The Human intro says Earth is a place of enlightenment and peace, I'd certainly hope by the time Starbound takes place where you're from and what your heritage is doesn't affect your standing in life (if you're a human). Humanity is scattered across the stars at this point, I highly doubt that many humans came from one specific area of Earth. Also I can totally make a human that isn't white, and while there are definitely non-white people who have European surnames, there are definitely more that don't. Isn't it hard to come up with a naming scheme for non-human races? Admittedly, this would require some work, and a bit of linguistic know-how, which would be doable for someone with an education in linguistics (such as myself, but I don't work for Chucklefish). I'd like to imagine, though, generating a character with a name that is distinctly Floran or Avian, rather than something like "Meatwing" which is distinctively silly. *Not that we can't model alien naming schemes off real-world names, in fact it might make sense given that certain species are modeled off certain cultures, but having a hylotl with a name like "Yamada" or "Tokugawa" would seem really weird.
I completely agree with you, hope to see this in the future. If not, you could also try to speak wih someone who makes mod to implement this as a mod!
oh thanks, someone replied O: I've looked at the actual namegen files, and I'm a bit confused still, but I think I get what's going on? better question is whether or not there's a limit to values in namegen :/
