List of character names that can be used in vanilla

**Solo** · 11-12-2006, 23:26

Thats not only for danish names, well at least doesnt surprise me that it concerns the whole list : as I said in another post regarding french faction, lots of names arent even french and most arent medieval. As I already worked on this in MTW (the modlet which never got finished due to RTW), I've planned a minor modification for several factions based on these previous files and obviously some enhancements. Since I'm french and working in the medieval era domain, its really easy for me to gather a good acurate list for France in a few hours. Ideally a group of people could be used to rework this area pretty fast and even allow other mods to use it as a base. I doubt they'd want to put a lot of effort just to end up with french kings named Aleaume, Garnot or Bureau (that means desk lol !). Simply kills the ambiance for me.

Well if anyone is interested, in other case I'll simply complete what I did for MTW a few years ago.

From memory, i had list for France, Empire, Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Bohemia, vikings and mongols. Althought I dont remember well about all.

One thing that concerns me are special characters. Most worked in MTW end added a nice immersion feeling when playing vikings or irish.

**alpaca** · 11-12-2006, 23:59

Originally Posted by Solo

Thats not only for danish names, well at least doesnt surprise me that it concerns the whole list : as I said in another post regarding french faction, lots of names arent even french and most arent medieval. As I already worked on this in MTW (the modlet which never got finished due to RTW), I've planned a minor modification for several factions based on these previous files and obviously some enhancements. Since I'm french and working in the medieval era domain, its really easy for me to gather a good acurate list for France in a few hours. Ideally a group of people could be used to rework this area pretty fast and even allow other mods to use it as a base. I doubt they'd want to put a lot of effort just to end up with french kings named Aleaume, Garnot or Bureau (that means desk lol !). Simply kills the ambiance for me.

Well if anyone is interested, in other case I'll simply complete what I did for MTW a few years ago.

From memory, i had list for France, Empire, Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Bohemia, vikings and mongols. Althought I dont remember well about all.

One thing that concerns me are special characters. Most worked in MTW end added a nice immersion feeling when playing vikings or irish.

That sounds very nice. I don't have any research sources myself but I'd definitely like to have a base like that which could be used in medieval-era mods

**Solo** · 11-13-2006, 18:46

That sounds very nice. I don't have any research sources myself but I'd definitely like to have a base like that which could be used in medieval-era mods

That would be the purpose so you can count on it.

I'll wait for the unpack tool before I post anything. Right now I have France and England being reworked with 12th and 13th nobility rolls (either roll of arms or military rolls) so they will be complete very soon. I managed to get my old files for the greeks ang mongols, which are very interesting because they were based on two good studies.
I obviously would need help on eastern factions, specially muslims as I'm really not qualified for those.

**Kushan** · 11-19-2006, 08:15

Originally Posted by Solo

Thats not only for danish names, well at least doesnt surprise me that it concerns the whole list : as I said in another post regarding french faction, lots of names arent even french and most arent medieval. As I already worked on this in MTW (the modlet which never got finished due to RTW), I've planned a minor modification for several factions based on these previous files and obviously some enhancements. Since I'm french and working in the medieval era domain, its really easy for me to gather a good acurate list for France in a few hours. Ideally a group of people could be used to rework this area pretty fast and even allow other mods to use it as a base. I doubt they'd want to put a lot of effort just to end up with french kings named Aleaume, Garnot or Bureau (that means desk lol !). Simply kills the ambiance for me.

Well if anyone is interested, in other case I'll simply complete what I did for MTW a few years ago.

From memory, i had list for France, Empire, Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Bohemia, vikings and mongols. Althought I dont remember well about all.

One thing that concerns me are special characters. Most worked in MTW end added a nice immersion feeling when playing vikings or irish.

Like alpaca. I dont have any way of doing the correct research, but I would definately use something like it in the projects I'm working on......once the stupid unpacker is released. lol

Kushan

**Solo** · 11-19-2006, 16:50

Well just an update on the work then :)

I restarted from zero, figuring I could do a better work than my old MTW lists. I must say I'm amazed how bad the names are for any of the factions (so far) in the game. 90% of the lists are simply wrong : not medieval, not noble, not spelled correctly or simply not local. I end up with cardinals or generals being called Karembeu, Richelieu, Chanteur or Maquereau in France (!!!!!!). Keeping MTW lists would have been a smart move and at least would have saved their time for bug fixing.

Complete (or near) :
France, England, Empire, Spain. Lists based on 13th and 14th centuries roll of arms, individual seals, knight rolls (french term is a "montre", not sure there's an accurate translation) and some genealogies. Surnames lists are 200-300 names long.
Byzantium. List based on individual seals.
Mongols. No glory, just plaggia from a good article :)

Advanced (50 to 90%) :
Portugal and Venice.
Scandinavians. I do them all at once, so work will be done for mods including Sweden and Norway.
Scots. Half work done.

Started :
Hungary, Poland, Milano and Sicile. (factions I intend to complete before patch).
Bohemia, Ireland and Wales that arent a priority since they are for additional mods.
Aztecs (well since they are in the vanilla, at least get their names right).

So that leaves Russia and muslim factions for now. I may find something for these but thats where help could be useful.

Concerns :
- Spelling and allowed character. I can't test right now so I don't know which characters will be dropped. I guess some will be anyway. Names like Ágærðr are likely to be spelled Ágaerdr or Agaerdr. I hope that at least accents will remain.
- Patronymics. I wont be able to keep any logic in the patronymic system of most languages. For example in spanish : Fernán Gonzalez de Rojas would have to be the son of a Gonzalo (..) de Rojas. Same applies to gaelics or scandinavian bynames (Muiredach macDonnchaid, Alger Haraldsen and even in english William FitzRoger). CA chose to drop most patronymics (12 macs in the whole scottish list !). I myself prefer to keep the esthetics, so I kept an accurate proportion of these. Spanish and Portuguese will have genitive (Ruiz, Sanchez, González) forms in the firstnames (that way they will at least change from generation to another).
We can't expect miracles, just something better than having a king with a 17th century peasant name (or even worse a 21th century football player ...).

**Apoc** · 11-24-2006, 17:11

Some very good work going on here - kudos to you, Solo.

**Solo** · 11-24-2006, 18:54

Thanks :)

Little update for these past few days.
Milan and Venice are well advanced now. Milan is more based on north west Italia (including Genoa and Susa families for example) than Milano itself.
Portugal, Ireland, Scotland, Bohemia and Norway are close to complete.

Papacy is a more complex problem to solve since popes and generals names are taken from the same pool (unless I'm wrong). Guess we have to choose between latin and italian names, as mixing them is rather akward imo. Has anyone seen a pope named Guido,Gionta or Zappa ?

**vovanmix** · 11-25-2006, 17:16

Russian names... Many of them are fantasy of developer!
Chort, Bolda - it is russian abusive words, and they were abusive all the times!

Iosif - jewish name, russian medieval commanders can't be jews

Kuritsa,Drozd,Shchuka,Zaiats,Kozel - it is names of animals, birds and fish! I never heard such names in history and in present! Where did heard them developers in Australia? In the voice of Pacific?

Orekh (nut),Shuba (fur coat),Zub (tooth) - the same, i laughed!

I understand surnames with this words, but Names! Are there really so few normal russian names?

It's interesting, how many knows about russia those who write this? As a land of white bears?

**Solo** · 11-26-2006, 01:51

Believe me, there's nothing special to Russia here. So far all the lists are only a bad mix of :
- Modern names. Like Richelieu and Karembeu in the french list (hey ! my best general is a football player ! if this doesnt kill ambiance for you, it does for me ...).
- Bad spelling. Not even medieval variations (at least not following any accepted form in medieval history, I'm speaking for France but I'm sure others aren't better) : Berthelemi could be either Barthélémy (modern), Bartolomeus (latin) or Bartolomée (common translation of latin form) but certainly not Berthelemi. Same goes for Francoys, Gieffroy, Gauchier, Christofle.
- Repetitions of the same name with an alternate spelling which doesn't make any sense since the latin form is the same. Guillaume, Guillemot and Guillemin are all translations of Willelmus. Same goes with Gocauo, Gonsaluus, Goncallo and Gonsaluu in the portuguese list, or Fernam and Fernando (which is not even spelled correctly) ; Hanrrique and Henrique ; or Joham and Joao. I'm stopping there since there's multiple examples in each list.
- Even worse, some names are total inventions. I really wonder where they got this strange idea to include some names, probably just to make the list longer. Well, bad idea guys, in some language only a few names are given at each generations. I've made a prosopography database specially for this little research and got very interesting results. For example John and William are a 60x more common than Edward in the english 13th c. nobility. The 12 more common first names represents more than 70% of the results.
- Last point reveals another flaw : in these lists some very rare first names are pretty common when they shouldnt even be in the list. My actual king is named Dimenche, talk about historical accuracy here ! Sadly it seems there's no dual pool for names as it was in MTW (kings names/character names). That will be a problem since some names were only reserved to kings. Louis is extremely rare until late 14th c. in France. The only individual named Edward in my english database is the king himself.
- Peasants names !!!! That may be the worst point about these. There's absolutely no way a king would name himself after a 16th c. peasant ! Come on guys I know Australia is far from medieval Europe and its just a game but still, that's simple logic. At least the english didn't get kings called Bill, Ed or Dick instead of William, Edward and Richard but I guess that was a close call given the quality here.

Okay I'm a bit harsh here but you see my point now : it's not about Russia it's about the whole game. I admit not everyone will have the same view on these things as they are moddable and secondary to gameplay but I think they are important when you speak in terms of ambiance and feeling. There are already a lot of people concerned here with units, skins, formations, balance etc ... I guess there must be someone to worry about these too, so since these are related to my researchs (well in fact heraldry, but prosopography/genealogy is closely related and I get to study lots of individuals) I just try to add my contribution to the community.
That said, I'm no specialist to eastern factions so anything you can provide about medieval russian naming habits/spelling is welcome (I can still figure it with a little research but some help won't hurt). It's more a matter of having all lists ready just after the patch or not, but to be honest I don't know where to start for muslim factions so if anyone had the courage to read the post until the end and knows anything on the subject, feel free to contribute :)

**gRom** · 12-10-2006, 00:43