List of character names that can be used in vanilla

[vovanmix]

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]

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]

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?

In fact, these are street nicknames and they are real (otherwise there were no so many Boldins,Kuritsins,Drozdovs,Zaitsevs Kozlovs, Orekhovs etc. in Russia), but,of course, they are not proper names. Iosif is a sound Christian name, mostly used by priests (Iosif Volotskiy, for exemple). The problem with russian names in game that in XI-XIII ceturies they were Pagan, but since XIV they become exclusively Greek Orthodox.

[vovanmix]

In fact, these are street nicknames and they are real (otherwise there were no so many Boldins,Kuritsins,Drozdovs,Zaitsevs Kozlovs, Orekhovs etc. in Russia), but,of course, they are not proper names. Iosif is a sound Christian name, mostly used by priests (Iosif Volotskiy, for exemple). The problem with russian names in game that in XI-XIII ceturies they were Pagan, but since XIV they become exclusively Greek Orthodox.

Pagan??? Russia became christian in 989, do u know? And now here is not much lesser slavic names than in XI - for example my name is traditional slavic, my grandfather too, and names of many of my friends. Svyatoslav, Vsevolod, Vladimir, Vyacheslav, Stanislav was popular in Russia in all times, since first written sources in IX century! This names are not pagan, they are traditional. I tink u will not call Richard, Whilliam or Frederic a pagan names, but they are not Christian names by origin!
And about nicknames.. they don't look like medieval nicknames, the forms of them is more like XVIII-XIX centuries. In medieval times this animals was called in some another form. Some nicknames - Postoy, Bezvitny, Ogibalo, Almaz, Minin, Palitsin, Silyanin, Susanin=)) - u can simply find many of them in Yandex. I had never heard in russian history surnames or nicknames like u wrote since XVII.
The peasant names was like Domashek, Voebud, Stanigost, Vdovin, Zhirochek - u can look about them here: http://newspskov.ru/news/sosedi/743/
http://ru.narod.ru/imenaf.htm

[Kobal2fr]

@Solo : well the problem is that you cannot completely do away with the peasant names. It's true that a king called Perrin would never live to the end of the day , but the thing is, you can get generals through Man of the Hour that are just captains from the town militia and suchlike. Those must have names like "Michelot Chevrier", or "Michelot from whatever" available to them, because a militia captain called Louis de Vallois just doesn't work either. Oh, and of course those names are also used for spies, merchants and priests, who come from the wee folk, and are better off with names like Jehan Coeur than Philippe d'Artois.

And the way the game is coded you can't have separate lists, so you have to rely on blind luck sadly .

[DukeofSerbia]

The more I read the more I don’t know is this is for or or or . Probably all of that.

Just a quick observation:

Byzantium

First names
Andronicus – Latin and everything else is Greek. It should be Andronicos.
Dragos is Serbian name.
Imbert ???
John is English version of Ioannes.
There are both Constantine and Konstantinos.
Slavos ???
Volkanos is Latinized Serbian name Vukan and it should be Bolcanus. It seems that somebody read wrong translated version of “Alexiad” by Anna Comnena.

Surnames
Prvovencani – This is Serbian and means First-Crowned. They again included it from MTW.
Radomiros – Slavic name Radomir + os.

Hungary

Catastrophe! Somebody copy/paste Hungarian first names in surname category.

First names
Damjan is Serbian version of Damien.
Georgius and after that Gyorgy!
Kowacz is surname and wrong spelled.
Lukac is surname.
Peter and then Petri!

Surnames
Ambrus is first name (Ambrose).
Andras is first name (Andrew).
Bela is first name.
Ferenc is first name (Francis).
Geza is first name.
Gyorgy is first name (Georg).
Imre is first name (Emeric).
Istvan is first name (Stephen).
Jakab is first name (Jacob).
Janos is first name (John).
Jo ???
Karoly is first name (Karl).
Kazimierz is Polish first name.
Marton is first name (Martin).
Mate is Croatian first name.
Matyas is first name (Matthew).
Mihaly is first name (Michael).
Miklos is first name (Nicholas).
Otto is first name.
Pal is first name (Paul).
Samuel is first name.

Women
Adelaide – there is Australian town as name…

I can’t imagine situations in game with characters like Andras Andras, Miklos Miklos and similar.

List of names for the most factions are .

[DukeofSerbia]

I obviously would need help on eastern factions, specially muslims as I'm really not qualified for those.

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

I have list of Serbian medieval names for Medieval Total Realism, so if you need that, just said. I have also Rus’ medieval names which I included in XL mod 2.1. Names are from Primary Chronicle, so they are authentic. Only a bit is problematic transliteration but it can be solved. And I have some Norman names.
I have for Muslim factions with correct spelling, for so called Byzantium and probably more.

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 ...).

I agree.

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 ?

Use Latin names for Papal State. Yes, it is too bad for names how they work. In MTW only first 5 names (I think) was used for names of rulers. Italian became language in XIX century when Italy was created (before that were a lot of dialects and even today is not much better).

- 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.

The same case with Serbian first names (this has nothing with MII TW, but for research and comparison). The most common male first name in Serbia in the last 200 years is Milan (also used by Czechs) but it was never used in medieval!

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 :)

If you want we can together create list of first names, surnames and women names. I can also contact some of my friends who are good with it.
After finish it you can publish it as a mini mod! Not only for vanilla but for many projects, so we can add names for mods (like Serbian, Czech, Armenian and etc).

What you say?

[DukeofSerbia]

Pagan??? Russia became christian in 989, do u know? And now here is not much lesser slavic names than in XI - for example my name is traditional slavic, my grandfather too, and names of many of my friends. Svyatoslav, Vsevolod, Vladimir, Vyacheslav, Stanislav was popular in Russia in all times, since first written sources in IX century! This names are not pagan, they are traditional.

Those names are old Slavic. Many of those names are common among other Slavic peoples. Svetislav in Serbian is Svyatoslav in Russian. Stanislav is the same. My name is also used by Russians but rare. Vladimir is common name among Serbs. Names with suffix -slav are the Slavic.
Names like Bogdan, Boris, Bronislav, Ivan, Miroslav, Rada, Radoslav, Svetlana, Vladislav and etc are common among the most Slavs.