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Ultimate Colonist Name Generator

This mod is XML-only so it's super lightweight, won't be broken by updates, and should work alongside everything without causing issues. However, that means it can only do so much.

The ultimate namer for colonist names, comprising hundreds of thousands of entries across several countries including accurate nicknames and diminuitives, and support for languages with gendered surnames. This dataset was created through countless hours of census reference and data formatting. I love name nerdery, and I've always wanted to have the game have a more interesting and diverse nameset, but it's always been hamstrung by its rigid Western naming system. This is my attempt to finally get it to work in a manner that I'm happy with, however some languages are works in progress due to this limitation.
This currently only affects factions using the Astropolitan culture, but I can add it to ancients(?) and raiders if requested.
I strongly recommend the use of Pawn Name Variety if you wish to remove backer names.


How it works
The namer picks a language at random and pulls a first name and last name based on gender. Several first names have matching nicknames and diminutives, eg Catherine 'Kate'. Some languages have gendered surnames. Patronymics are generally not included in case their actual father gets generated, but there are some languages that use mostly patronymic surnames anyway, in which case these won't match the actual father's name.
It's also not necessarily that simple all the time, there are sub-sets within the language datasets for certain edge cases and countries which have multiple different cultures, but you get the idea.
The generator generally links matching datasets from the same language for first name and last name, however due to the use of complete census data for various countries, it is still possible, but less likely, to have a mixed name. eg. it's more likely to generate a name like 'Giulia Teruzzi' than 'Giulia Jones' or 'Robert "Bob" Hoskins' than 'Robert "Bob" Zhang'.
Language weight is somewhat based on world population as a starting point, then tweaked with lots of testing and mashing of the randomise button until it feels right.

What about languages without surnames?
This has always been my pet peeve of the Rimworld naming system, and the reason this took ages for me to actually make. Languages such as Burmese, Balinese and Indonesian are not currently represented due to the aggressive first name/last name limitation of the system. I'm going to do some experimentation on mononyms and such for these, but in the meantime some languages without surnames are currently represented by being pushed into this system, where the second/last part of the name becomes a surname, as would usually occur in immigration to a Western country.

This mod currently includes entries from the following languages/countries:

• English: Complete UK, US, Canadian census data, some Australian and NZ entries
  
• Albanian
  
• Arabic (Gulf, contains some Moroccan and Urdu names)
  
• Armenian
  
• Azeri
  
• Bangla
  
• Basque
  
• Bulgarian
  
• Chinese (Han)
  
• Dutch and Afrikaans
  
• Estonian
  
• Ethopia and Eritrea
  
• Finnish
  
• French (primarily mainland but contains some West African names)
  
• Gujarati
  
• Hausa
  
• Hindi
  
• Hungarian
  
• Italian
  
• Japanese
  
• Kazakh
  
• Korean
  
• Latvian
  
• Lithuanian
  
• Philippines: Tagalog and Cebuano
  
• Polish
  
• Sikh
  
• Spanish: Castillian and Latin
  
• Yoruba

Why would I use this over NamesGalore?
NamesGalore only contains datasets for ~10 languages and has only a few entries for each.

Why would I use this over Name Bank?
This mod adds matching diminutives/nickname versions of names based on the first name generated, which is not supported by Name Bank (as far as I know). Also, Name Bank has far fewer names in each category, and doesn't have first names and last names for each language it includes. However, I will later release historical name sets that can be plugged into Name Bank modularly if you want to theme your game after a certain historical period and region. I'm also considering releasing the name lists used here as Name Bank modules as well.

[ko-fi.com]