Yesterday the 29th name generator was added to this site, Danish Names, with the 30th being planned for release next week.
Some of these, like the Maori one, have been a bit of a challenge to research, but through library visits and many an online source the name generators have come together,
One of the biggest , well, challenges, has been making sure that the name follow the correct pattern for the culture they are creating names for. For example, some Asian cultures follow the pattern of [Family Name] [Given Name] , but in other cultures, such as many in the west it goes by [Given Name] [Family Name]. For the most part this is quite simple to set-up, the trick is correctly remembering which culture uses which format.
The next challenge was the fact that a few of the other groups & cultures have their own alphabet, such as the Armenian one. Some small liberties have been taken with these and the nearest possible translation has been used instead. This includes special characters. This is both down to coding limitations with the random engine used and legibility. I encourage you to do your own research into these cultures to get the true feel of their names and to fully appreciate the wonderful variety of languages that are present in this world.
Plans for the Name Generator page include:
- Organising the names into better category’s, such as Asian, European, Fantasy, etc
- Adding a search option to find the one you want
- Adding more name generators of course, along with others to the main page.
- Looking into the possibility of making some of the name generators into PDF format for offline use. This is not 100% confirmed, but is a real possibility.
Plans for other generators:
- More of EG products being made into on site generators, Note that the PDF versions will normally be more sophisticated than the site versions. This is a deliberate design decision, not only to promote the sale of the PDFs, but also so that you can get at least something for free and to help you out, such as the name generators.
- Adding useful tools/generators that can be used in games. This is a another long-term plan. Depending on the complexity and time frame this may take to implement, don’t be surprised if nothing comes from this.
- Looking into a generator that uses images, for random maps,dungeons etc. Again, as with other plans, this will be limited by time and complexity. Also this will eat up a lot of bandwidth, so may be put behind a subscription. Again, nothing set in stone. Just throwing some ideas out.
Time to sign off and get back to work. If there is any generator of feature you’d like to see added to site, get in touch via EG facebook page, or the contact page here. If it’s feasible it’ll be added to the list of things to add and will, eventually I promise, makes its merry way to here.
