Names (was Re: Hello again)

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Erik Sigra wrote:
> 
> <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/xconq7/2001/msg00070.html>
> <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/xconq7/2001/msg00071.html>
> <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/xconq7/2001/msg00075.html>

The city name lists are short because there were a lot of
countries to do, so it's good to have more names.

That said, and also based on watching the FreeCiv discussion
on the same topic, this exposes a whole set of cultural
issues.  As I see it, there are several kinds of names, and
people react differently to each kind:

1. Names that are culturally or historically important, like
London or Rome.  Get these wrong and everybody hates you.

2. Names that are important, but tied to eras.  Only members
of the culture or avid historians know or care whether it's
New Amsterdam or New York, St Petersburg or Leningrad.

3. Obscure names.  Members of the culture like them, everybody
else is mystified.  For instance, La Grange is funny to Americans
of a certain age, but nobody else, and Moab is only amusing if
you've visited that part of Utah.  Some of the Finnish towns are
probably hilarious to Finns, but mean nothing to me.

4. Names that are funny to other cultures.  Much of town-names.g
is like that.  Only a nerd thinks Munger Junction is funny, and
Wankers Corner is only special to the British. :-)  My wife can
never get all the way through Poggibonsi without laughing.

5. Synthetic names.  The goal here is to have an inexhaustible
supply of plausible-sounding names, and ideally to amuse natives
and non-natives from time to time.

No single one of these categories is right for all games.  The
standard Xconq game is kind of blan^H^H^H^Hgeneric, so it's been
OK to mix the categories, but I note that the commercial Civ sticks
to the first category primarily, because these are maximally
evocative for the most people.  FreeCiv dabbles in 2. and 3.,
but the process frequently degenerates into nationalistic
name-calling, an interesting phenomenon, also tells you why PayCivs
don't go there.

There's not much point in having a really precise categorization
for lists of names until the game setup machinery gives you a
little more control over the details of the side you're playing.
Perhaps some kind of a two-level structure - first general side,
then specific era? Certainly having a "synthetic name" vs "real
name" variant would be useful.

Stan