Random name generator

From AJS.COM

For updated information about mkname, my random name generator, please see Contest: Design the CSS for mkname and Updated Random Name Generator

My random name generator for roleplaying and video game characters is available as its own Web page at: http://www.ajs.com/~ajs/cgi-bin/mkname.cgi This tool can generate realistic sounding names for many different cultures. It may even have applications in many other places I haven't thought of.

1 What it does
- 1.1 Generating names from other cultures
2 Origins
- 2.1 Source code

What it does

The random name generator takes an input file like the U.S. 1990 Census data and looks at all of the names in the list. It determines what word parts most often follow what other word parts and then generates a random string of those word parts, with weighting toward selecting likely progression. So for example, American names that start with "Sha" would very likely continue with "ro", "nn" or "wn", so the program might come up with "Sharol" (which contains word parts from two names: Sharon and Carol. Sharol isn't an American name, but it certainly sounds like it could be one, and it would be a fine name for a fantasy character.

Generating names from other cultures

The wonderful thing about generating names this way is that it can take any input list. Want a Norse name? I just took a list of names from Norse chronicles and fed them to the name generator.

Because it works with the Unicode character set, it can generate valid-sounding names in just about any language. Here are some samples:

Þrottill (Norse male)
Étiervé (13th century French male)
جوانت (Iranian Farsi male) - if you speak Farsi, I'd love it if you could log in and add a comment to the talk page, telling me if this sounds valid.

Origins

This program was originally part of a larger program for generating random passwords, where the ability to generate random, but pronounceable words was one of many tools available to help people specify what their password should look like. Mkpasswd became Mkname, and the rest, as they say, is history.