Author Topic: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.  (Read 8079 times)

Hammer

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We are looking for some people that have non-English language skills. The planet project is coming together nicely but we are in need of naming help.  If you haven't heard of the planet project see here

While the systems names will remain the same, we need to generate names for continents, moons, etc. While we have tons of ideas for places based off the English language. But we are struggling with other languages.

Some information on our basic methods.  We are basing the names around surname and trying to add a possessive.  For example if the surname generated Morgan it could then add something like Hold, City, Rock to become Morgan Hold, Morgan City, or Morgan's Rock.

We've got a google sheet to collect the data with.

Here are the instructions to the sheet.
Code: [Select]
Each sheet has the following columns:
name - this is the additional flavor for a [NAME]. The [NAME] input itself is given by [NAME] which should always be included. So for example, a sur[NAME] generated as "Larson" with an entry that reads [NAME]vik would come out as "Larsonvik".

Frequency - a numeric value giving the relative frequency of the [NAME] flavor. The baseline here is 5. A [NAME] frequency of 10 is twice as likely as a 5. A 5 is 5 times more likely than a one and so on.

lgroup - The language group for the [NAME] flavor. This identifies which choices a given planet will use depending on its derived nationality. Any entries left blank will be added to all possible generators. The list of all used language groups is given in the "language group" sheet at the end. Names must match exactly here.

Notes - this is the English translation for the entry. Any foreign names without an English translation in the notes will not be accepted.

Each sheet does the following:

Surname Additions - For names generated by sampling a surname, the flavor here will add something either before or after that name, possibly with an additional possessive. So if the surname was "Morgan" and "[NAME]'s Hold" was selected the final name would be "Morgan's Hold".

City Additions - These are various flavor additions to names generated by sampling a surname, specifically for cities. The most boring would be "[NAME] City" but we want other options here as well as some that are more language specific.

New Additions - these are language specific additions of "New" to a name. These can be applied to all types and can be combined with the other two flavors

Link to the sheet HERE

**PLEASE FOLLOW THE FORMAT ON THE GOOGLE SHEET**

Also if for some reason you can't access the google sheet please add them to this thread. Feedback on naming conventions is also appreciated.
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Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #1 on: 10 September 2019, 12:45:08 »
Just a slight addendum. Not all the naming is surname based. the "new addition" section is based on draws from actual place names in the world and adds cultural equivalents of "New" in front. So "Glasgow" would become "New Glasgow"
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plutonick

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #2 on: 10 September 2019, 13:27:50 »
Question, I can provide a lot of flavor for [NAME] but it would only make sense if [NAME] was a green word too, instead of a generic english one.

Example, there is a canon Planet called Aspropyrgos which in your example Aspro is the flavor word for 'white' and Pyrgos is the greek [NAME] of Tower.

But it would not make sense as Aspro[Tower] which is would your sheet would generate, if i am not mistaken.
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Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #3 on: 10 September 2019, 14:42:03 »
Question, I can provide a lot of flavor for [NAME] but it would only make sense if [NAME] was a green word too, instead of a generic english one.

Example, there is a canon Planet called Aspropyrgos which in your example Aspro is the flavor word for 'white' and Pyrgos is the greek [NAME] of Tower.

But it would not make sense as Aspro[Tower] which is would your sheet would generate, if i am not mistaken.

Yes, the system we have here is not really designed for these cases. Keep in mind that [NAME] in most cases is going to be a surname, so Aspro[NAME] is going to get something that translates as "White Anderson" or some such. What we are looking for are things equivalent to names like "Morgan's Hold" or "Anderson's Folly."

Also, for some background, we do have a database of real place names in the world that we use to generate some random names. We also have a probable country of origin listed for all planets by the planet name. I just checked and Aspropirgos  is listed as Greek. We use that country of origin to pull surnames and placenames. So "[NAME]'s Folly" would probably come out something like "Papastathopoulos's Folly" on Aspropirgos. Or it might pull an actual place name that would already contain many of the qualifiers that you are thinking of above.

For the city additions, as well, what we want are things that would be added to a surname to indicate city. In Greek maybe this is something like "[NAME]opolis?"
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Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

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Sir Chaos

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #4 on: 10 September 2019, 15:09:21 »
Yes, the system we have here is not really designed for these cases. Keep in mind that [NAME] in most cases is going to be a surname, so Aspro[NAME] is going to get something that translates as "White Anderson" or some such. What we are looking for are things equivalent to names like "Morgan's Hold" or "Anderson's Folly."

Also, for some background, we do have a database of real place names in the world that we use to generate some random names. We also have a probable country of origin listed for all planets by the planet name. I just checked and Aspropirgos  is listed as Greek. We use that country of origin to pull surnames and placenames. So "[NAME]'s Folly" would probably come out something like "Papastathopoulos's Folly" on Aspropirgos. Or it might pull an actual place name that would already contain many of the qualifiers that you are thinking of above.

For the city additions, as well, what we want are things that would be added to a surname to indicate city. In Greek maybe this is something like "[NAME]opolis?"

I just had an idea that´s sort of related to this. If you have (tentative) origin languages for planet names listed, and those languages correspond to the backgrounds of the names in the random name generator for MM/MHQ, you could use that to offer a "local name" option for new personnel - i.e. names for new personnel are generated from the same language as the name of the current location. I.e. Greek names when you´re in Aspropirgos, Japanese on Kobe, English on New Avalon and so on... maybe even list some planets (like Terra or Galatea or Solaris) as "Generic" to draw names from all languages. Is that in any way feasible?
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Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #5 on: 10 September 2019, 15:19:10 »
I just had an idea that´s sort of related to this. If you have (tentative) origin languages for planet names listed, and those languages correspond to the backgrounds of the names in the random name generator for MM/MHQ, you could use that to offer a "local name" option for new personnel - i.e. names for new personnel are generated from the same language as the name of the current location. I.e. Greek names when you´re in Aspropirgos, Japanese on Kobe, English on New Avalon and so on... maybe even list some planets (like Terra or Galatea or Solaris) as "Generic" to draw names from all languages. Is that in any way feasible?

Its feasible, although it assumes you are drawing personnel from the current planet rather than over some HPG wire or something. Put in a feature request if you don't want it to get forgotten.

The only issue is that we had to add a few language options for the random name generator here that are not in MHQ and we only have surname data and male first names.
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The Flaming Devil Monkeys - The adventures of a band of misfit gladiators turned mercenary mechwarriors during the Word of Blake Jihad.
The Free Company of Oriente - No longer bound by the politics of the great houses, the Free Company of Oriente seeks its fate and fortune among the stars.
Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

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plutonick

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #6 on: 10 September 2019, 15:26:31 »

For the city additions, as well, what we want are things that would be added to a surname to indicate city. In Greek maybe this is something like "[NAME]opolis?"

It could be [NAME]opolis, or it could it could be [NAME]polis, without the '-o' depending if [NAME] ends in a vowel or not.
I am afraid, at least as far as greek is concerned, that every randomly generated name will have to be checked by a greek in order to make sure it sounds correct (to greeks). I suppose to the rest of the users it will indeed sound *greek*, but to greeks it would be just like this: https://twitter.com/lrgmnn/status/813635533658144768?s=20
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PurpleDragon

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #7 on: 10 September 2019, 15:58:31 »
Why not use an existing cities naming system?   I mean you could have; as an example from China; Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Xinhua, Nanning, Zhengzhou, Chongqing,...    And, many, many others.  That's just from China.  You could use Google maps for the most part; just choose a part of the world and zoom in on a random area until some of the smaller cities start to show up. 

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kaliban

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #8 on: 10 September 2019, 18:01:27 »
I can help with Portuguese (my native language). I know some German and Spanish but probably you can find a plenty of native speakers of these languages.

It is just no clear how I can interact with the document
« Last Edit: 10 September 2019, 18:05:21 by kaliban »

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #9 on: 10 September 2019, 18:30:42 »
I made a few additions in Portuguese. In case you need more, let me know
« Last Edit: 10 September 2019, 18:32:17 by kaliban »

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #10 on: 11 September 2019, 07:01:45 »
First, thank you for your efforts in giving diversity a place in BattleTech. Since this is a sensitive topic, I would like to add two thoughts.

Currently, there is no provision for regions, provinces, continents or other spaces to be named. I'm thinking of things like [NAME]land (English, German etc. as in Deutschland, England etc.) or [NAME]desh (Persian, Hindu etc. as in Bangladesh). This could also lead to new names for cities, such as [Name]desh City etc.

In addition, your sheet for language groups mentions "Indian". This is misleading and possibly hurtful for both people from India and Native Americans. In my opinion, the proper denominations should be "Hindu" and either "Native American" or a diversified version of the latter, e. g. Siouan (Sioux, Lakota etc.), Iroquoian, Na-Dené (Appache, Navajo etc.), Uto-Aztecan (Hopi, Aztecan languages) etc. Wikipedia has a list that could help with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas

An easy solution would be to add only Native American language families with more than ten languages in them. Or simply pick 5-10 of the big language families (3 from North America, 2 from Central America, 3 from South America, 1 from the Carribean for example).
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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #11 on: 11 September 2019, 10:40:19 »
Back in 2007, on the MapMaking Forum (Cartographer's Guild), I wrote a short article: TOPONOMY, or How to Name Places

While the article I wrote is more useful to D&D-esque types of maps, I see no reason why the naming conventions can't be used here, so, I give you my Article:


Quote
I see this topic come up over and over, and I have often posted, and reposted and linked to previous posts, etc, and now we have a sub forum for this wonderful topic. So, here we go:

For me, when I was creating my world way back, names were kinda easy.

A few examples:

Empire of Brighton, saw the name Brighton on a sign post as a street name.

Ferringio was just a play on the name Ferigno (guy who played the Hulk on the TV Series).

As I got older (my original campaign world is over 20 years old), I started thinking, how do we, as humans in the real world come up with city names? In our English speaking culture we have a tendency to name them after either people, other places (England has York, The US has New York, England has Jersey, US has New Jersey, France has Orleans, US has New Orleans), or after prominent physical/environmental features: Swiftwater, Bridal Falls, etc.

So, Kingdom names aside, place names are easy.

The name of a Human city were they first arrived in a new land could be First Landing, because it makes sense from a Etymological point of view. Its where they first arrived, it would be their biggest settlement, as a lot of the first timber for construction would have come from the dismantling of the ships they arrived on, etc.

A web search on Toponomy (the scientific name for the study of place names), brought me this little gem regarding place names in Britain:

Quote
Places were originally named in Old English, Norse, Scots, Welsh, Gaelic or Cornish, according to landscape features (topography), nature of settlement (habitat – city, town, village, fortifications) or the people or tribe living in the area, often combining two or three descriptive terms in one name. These names were then influenced and modified at various historical periods through language shift driven by socio-economic and political changes.

These sometimes introduced new language influences, such as French from the Norman Conquest.

So, if you have names for towns villages, etc called Walden's Bridge because some guy named Walden built a bridge and a village sprung up there because it was a good crossing point, so be it. Even the name of the game "Neverwinter Night" is based on the city of Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms, so named because even though it is far north, it seldom experience Winter in it's full force.

So, for example, in Britain, there is this place called Oxford, which obviously was named because it originally was a good place for herdsmen to bring the Oxen across a river.

Here in the province of British Columbia, I was born in they city of Prince George, which was originally known as Fort George. This fort, from back in the early frontier days, was named after the Prince of England, named George.

All around Prince George are communities with names like MacKenzie (Named after the explorer of the same name), Fort St John, Fort St James, Dawson Creek, and the youngest, the mining town of less than 30 years, Tumbler Ridge. Even Canada was named (incorrectly) because the local natives invited the French Explorers back to Can-na-ha (or something of that effect), which in their language meant Village or Group of Huts.

Thus, when naming your communities, do not worry about trying to come up with bizarre, wacky names that may look cool, but be hard to pronounce. If it's hard for you, it will likely be equally hard for your fantasy inhabitants.

Another method I use when naming areas is I look around and the things near me. I think of the names of things around me and switch some letters or exaggerate other parts of it.

For instance, I am looking at my MONITOR as I write this. Monitor has a cool sound, so change a couple of letters and I have Monather, or Monistor, or reduce to two syllables, Montor. I guarantee, when people see that name on your map, they are not going to go: "Hey you just changed a few letters in Monitor! You Suck!" Nope, never will happen.

Finally, use a bit of imagination when naming areas too. Swift Current is a cool name for a small town/village on a river. So what if there are umpteen million real world Swift Currents, it is a descriptive name. Why do you think there is practically a Springfield in almost every one of the states in the US

So, think of geographic features and simply name communites after them. This gives you BlackRock, Red Rock, Greenfields, Blue Water, Windbluffe, Blue Lake, Pineglen, etc.

Best of luck!

If you are looking for more, I can ask my Wife for some assistance for any Korean sounding words. I can tell you this much, As near as I can tell, darn near every single Province/City/Town etc will be a Two-Syllable name:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@36.3658315,127.2848942,8.15z

Infact, a quick look at that I can see only TWO 3-Syllable names: Uijeonbu (의정부), and Namyangju (남양주). Even cities like Seoul (서울) we as English Speakers think of as being a Single Syllable is actually in the Korean Language TWO Syllables: Su (서) - Oul (울)

So, each 'cluster' of characters represent a Syllable: 남양주 would then break down to: 남    양    주   with 남 = NAM   양  = YANG  주 = gju. For added authenticity, you could end every single city name with: 시 or shi:

Quote
Korean Word: 시
Romanization: shi
English Meaning: 1. hour, time, o'clock 2. (particle in verb to add politeness) 3. city, town 4. (particle in noun to add meaning of 'in-law') 5. poem 6. to see (hanja)

versus 도 or DO - Which is either a Province or an Island (제주도 or Jeju-Do)

Quote
Korean Word: 도
Romanization: do
English Meaning: 1. as well, too 2. either, neither 3. even (adverb) 4. although, even if 5. degree (angle or temperature) 6. district, province 7. island 8. drawing, picture 9. principle, doctrine
Listen to Word:

So, Jeju refers to one of Three places in Korea. There is 제주시 or Jejushi (Jeju City) which is the district captial of 제주도 (Jejudo - Jeju Province/District) on 제주도 (Jeju Island).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_City
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Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #12 on: 11 September 2019, 11:20:25 »
It could be [NAME]opolis, or it could it could be [NAME]polis, without the '-o' depending if [NAME] ends in a vowel or not.
I am afraid, at least as far as greek is concerned, that every randomly generated name will have to be checked by a greek in order to make sure it sounds correct (to greeks). I suppose to the rest of the users it will indeed sound *greek*, but to greeks it would be just like this: https://twitter.com/lrgmnn/status/813635533658144768?s=20

You know I was just having a conversation with someone about that baseball name generator in relation to this. The upshot is that the next merc in my campaign will be named Bobson Dugnutt  ;)

I am quite sure that there is going to be some stuff that is either comical or grimace inducing for non-English speakers. We are doing our best, but also need to keep it relatively simple in order for it to be manageable. Our plan is to fix odd cases by hand as they come up.

FYI I just did a system generation run this morning and here is what came up for Aspropirgos's landmass and capital city names:

Lyssarides (Fitzios),  Morikis,  Papadakos,  Kyriakou Delight

I hope there are no "Bobson Dugnutt's" in there.
MegaMek Dev and Bug Creator

The Flaming Devil Monkeys - The adventures of a band of misfit gladiators turned mercenary mechwarriors during the Word of Blake Jihad.
The Free Company of Oriente - No longer bound by the politics of the great houses, the Free Company of Oriente seeks its fate and fortune among the stars.
Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

Make your own campaign website with the MekHQ Blog

Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #13 on: 11 September 2019, 11:24:45 »
Why not use an existing cities naming system?   I mean you could have; as an example from China; Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Xinhua, Nanning, Zhengzhou, Chongqing,...    And, many, many others.  That's just from China.  You could use Google maps for the most part; just choose a part of the world and zoom in on a random area until some of the smaller cities start to show up.

We are doing that. I have a massive database of place names by country generated through open cage. But we don't want all names to be based on existing place names. Names generated through surnames (e.g. Morgan's Hold) are common. We basically have four naming routines:

  • place names
  • surnames
  • mythological names
  • alphanumeric sequences

Different types of objects sample from these options at different frequencies (e.g. moons and planets are more likely to have mythological names). What this project is doing is adding flavor to the first two types. Most of that is on surnames but there is some probability of adding something like "New" in front of all placenames.
MegaMek Dev and Bug Creator

The Flaming Devil Monkeys - The adventures of a band of misfit gladiators turned mercenary mechwarriors during the Word of Blake Jihad.
The Free Company of Oriente - No longer bound by the politics of the great houses, the Free Company of Oriente seeks its fate and fortune among the stars.
Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

Make your own campaign website with the MekHQ Blog

Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #14 on: 11 September 2019, 11:26:32 »
I made a few additions in Portuguese. In case you need more, let me know

Obrigado!
MegaMek Dev and Bug Creator

The Flaming Devil Monkeys - The adventures of a band of misfit gladiators turned mercenary mechwarriors during the Word of Blake Jihad.
The Free Company of Oriente - No longer bound by the politics of the great houses, the Free Company of Oriente seeks its fate and fortune among the stars.
Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

Make your own campaign website with the MekHQ Blog

Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #15 on: 11 September 2019, 11:40:49 »
Currently, there is no provision for regions, provinces, continents or other spaces to be named. I'm thinking of things like [NAME]land (English, German etc. as in Deutschland, England etc.) or [NAME]desh (Persian, Hindu etc. as in Bangladesh). This could also lead to new names for cities, such as [Name]desh City etc.

Yes, this could be added but what kinds of [Name] are you thinking here? Surname?

Quote
In addition, your sheet for language groups mentions "Indian". This is misleading and possibly hurtful for both people from India and Native Americans. In my opinion, the proper denominations should be "Hindu" and either "Native American" or a diversified version of the latter, e. g. Siouan (Sioux, Lakota etc.), Iroquoian, Na-Dené (Appache, Navajo etc.), Uto-Aztecan (Hopi, Aztecan languages) etc. Wikipedia has a list that could help with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas

An easy solution would be to add only Native American language families with more than ten languages in them. Or simply pick 5-10 of the big language families (3 from North America, 2 from Central America, 3 from South America, 1 from the Carribean for example).

The names listed in the language groups go back to the source of the random surname data that we are using here (and the one that is used by MegaMek already). Fun fact: that random surname data actually comes from original and mod data for the baseball simulator game Out of the Park Baseball. In addition to "Indian" rather than "Hindi" there is also the cringeworthy "Hispanic" rather than "Spanish." Since all of this generator stuff is happening backstage for this system generation run and won't be actually in MHQ, I decided it was better to not to make any changes to the names in order to not accidentally break anything since multiple files are linked here by these names.

As for specific Native American language groups: yes, linguistically that makes total sense. Practically, it doesn't. We simply don't have a way of connecting those specific language groups to a planet's name, nor do we have a list of surnames specific to each of those languages. We are basically stuck with what we have for surname databases which is why the language groups listed are the ones listed. I added a few that were not in MM because there were a significant number of planets tied to them.

I am very committed to trying to respect as much diversity as possible here. The ethnocentrism of battletech naming (Scots in space) has always bugged me a bit. But I have to balance that with practicalities.
MegaMek Dev and Bug Creator

The Flaming Devil Monkeys - The adventures of a band of misfit gladiators turned mercenary mechwarriors during the Word of Blake Jihad.
The Free Company of Oriente - No longer bound by the politics of the great houses, the Free Company of Oriente seeks its fate and fortune among the stars.
Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

Make your own campaign website with the MekHQ Blog

Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #16 on: 11 September 2019, 11:45:27 »
Back in 2007, on the MapMaking Forum (Cartographer's Guild), I wrote a short article: TOPONOMY, or How to Name Places

I discovered that toponymy was a thing in the process of building this name generator.
MegaMek Dev and Bug Creator

The Flaming Devil Monkeys - The adventures of a band of misfit gladiators turned mercenary mechwarriors during the Word of Blake Jihad.
The Free Company of Oriente - No longer bound by the politics of the great houses, the Free Company of Oriente seeks its fate and fortune among the stars.
Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

Make your own campaign website with the MekHQ Blog

Ursus Maior

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #17 on: 11 September 2019, 14:47:39 »
Yes, this could be added but what kinds of [Name] are you thinking here? Surname?

[...]

I am very committed to trying to respect as much diversity as possible here. The ethnocentrism of battletech naming (Scots in space) has always bugged me a bit. But I have to balance that with practicalities.
Okay, I cropped out a lot of you post, but thank you for explaining the project's technical background. I now understand far better how you're operating.

Yes, ethnocentrism is a huge point in BT and in 80s fantastic literature (especially anything "pulp" such as BattleTech) in general. I deliberately use diversified name generators for my own campaigns as well.

Regarding your question about what kind of [Name]s I'm thinking of: It works with anything, basically. Let's say, you have the a supervisor of a colonial program on planet X somewhere in the 23rd century. His name is Bhima Gayakvad (I used this site for the name: https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/hindi-names.php). The colony is privately funded, he has total naming rights and decides to plaster his name all over the planet. But while he himself is of Muslim Indian descent, he has a couple of German and Chinese settlers on board. So he names the prime colony "Gayakvadabad" ("-abad" does occur with cities on the Indian subcontinent, but it roots in Persian and is associated with the Muslim conquest of pre-modern India), the continent "Gayakvaddesh" (literally "Gayakvad's Land").

He then names the major colony of settlers with Chinesedescent Shiyang (after his business partner Yang) and that of settlers with German descent Bad Gayakvadtal, because of the natural hot springs that make the colony a pleasure island in the desert valley in Central Gayakvaddesh.
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Kentares

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #18 on: 11 September 2019, 16:54:52 »
I added a couple of notes completing Kaliban notes (I´m also portuguese) and I can add more. Also take into account that portuguese from Portugal is a bit different than portuguese from Brazil (even more than english from UK to english from US).

I can help in both and feel free to ask if you guys need somekind of tips or opinions on how to use the names.
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plutonick

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #19 on: 12 September 2019, 03:32:43 »
You know I was just having a conversation with someone about that baseball name generator in relation to this. The upshot is that the next merc in my campaign will be named Bobson Dugnutt  ;)

Oh man... this sounds awesome. I am going to use that generator for my unit too!
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Quote
FYI I just did a system generation run this morning and here is what came up for Aspropirgos's landmass and capital city names:

Lyssarides (Fitzios),  Morikis,  Papadakos,  Kyriakou Delight

I hope there are no "Bobson Dugnutt's" in there.

Question: I suppose Lyssarides, Fitzios, Morikis etc are the [NAME] equivalent. How are these picked? What is their source? Because they do sound greek but I have never heard of them. I did a google check and they are indeed greek names but seem to be very rare. Papadakos and Kyriakou are indeed greek common names (in rarity that is) and sound just fine.

But keep in mind, that you can't just add -opolis to those. Kyriakouopolis is just wrong, same for Papadakosopolis etc. In fact you rarely add -opolis next to name. Most often you add it next to an adjective. For instance Acropolis (which in fact is Acro+polis, not Acr+opolis) Means (broadly speaking) Edge and City, or Border and City.
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Ursus Maior

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #20 on: 12 September 2019, 07:09:33 »
No, "akropolis" means "high town" or "upper town", as in "the part of the city that is above of the lower town". In this instance "akros" means "peak".

But indeed, the word formation rules in Greek are more complex as in English (true for most languages, I guess). Usually, you don't combine too many vowels in Greek, as plutonick already mentioned in his examples. And vowel combination is a bit finicky.

There is, however, no problem in combining personal names with the suffix "-polis", numerous examples come to mind: Constantinople (Konstantinoupolis, after Emperor Constantine), Adrianople ([H]adrianopolis, after Emperor Hadrian), Augustopolis (the Phrygian one, after Caesar Augustus) or Pompeioupolis (either the one in Cilicia or the one in Pontos, bother after Pompey the Great, a Roman statesman and general).

The trick here is, that "-polis" is attached to the possessive genetive of the Name. And while many (but by far not all) male names have their regular ending on "-os", the possessive genitive ends on "-ou". This makes Konstantinos Konstantinou[polis] and Roman Pompeius gets treated as Pompeios and becomes Pompeiou[polis].

As time flows and Ancient Greek shifted to Middle (and later Modern) Greek, the long "ou" sound shifted to a short "o", making the possessive irrecognisable.
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BiggRigg42

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #21 on: 15 September 2019, 10:30:53 »
My girlfriend's native language is Spanish, and she doesn't think that some of the Spanish names in here make sense. This is particularly the case in the surnames.

For example, cell 16A of the surname additions tab says, "[NAME] Bay." Someone wrote that "Bay" means death. First of all, my girlfriend had never seen that word in Spanish before; so, she checked the Real Academia Espanola dictionary (https://dle.rae.es/) and sure enough "bay" does not exist. Second, the Spanish word for "death" is "muerte," which doesn't make sense as a surname addition.

There are other Spanish examples on this spreadsheet that also don't make sense, unless we are misunderstanding how things work. We would love to help out more if we can. 

 
« Last Edit: 15 September 2019, 13:51:05 by BiggRigg42 »

Kentares

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #22 on: 15 September 2019, 11:45:39 »
Stuff... read above

And shes right. I also speak spanish and never saw/read that word in spanish language.

"Aires" (cell 14A) is also a good example of another bad translation and meaning (it is believed that its origin is from the english word "heir" - an anglicism - and has nothing to do with "air(s)" as someone noted there).
« Last Edit: 15 September 2019, 11:53:14 by Kentares »
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Schugger

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #23 on: 16 September 2019, 07:24:03 »
I do not know much about spanish, but muerte is an adjective and it's suffix will change according to the substantive it belongs to.
To program this will be the stuff of legends, I guess ;)

I would really like to add something useful to the community by throwing in my german, but I don't know if I did understand the spreadsheet correctly.
So for example, if I put in the name coloumn: [NAME]s Hafen (german for harbour) and the name generator end up on "Karl" the result will be "Karls Hafen", right?
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Sir Chaos

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #24 on: 16 September 2019, 08:31:11 »
I think you could save A LOT of work if you simply got the random generator to put out rough results, without much regard for grammar and suffixes, and then let native speakers in each language go through the results to correct them.
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NeonKnight

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #25 on: 16 September 2019, 09:05:02 »
I think you could save A LOT of work if you simply got the random generator to put out rough results, without much regard for grammar and suffixes, and then let native speakers in each language go through the results to correct them.

True. And while I am not a native speaker (crap I can't even SPEaK korean :P) I know enough of what looks right and can always tap my wife for help.

But I will give this.

99.99% of all Korean names follow the following pattern: Family Name (surname), Given Name. Family Names are again 99.99% a single syllable (Park, Lee [more correctly phonetically Ee], Kim). Infact, those three surname's account for nearly a full 50% of the Korean Population, with the next populous being: Choi, Jeong, Kang, Yoon, Jang and Shin. As an aside, through my wife I know a great many Korean people, and of them...I only know people with those Surnames. My Wife's being Lee, and her mother's being Shin.

https://www.ibtimes.com/kim-park-lee-why-do-koreans-have-so-few-surnames-1472324

And this brings to the next part. For Authenticity, in married couples, the wife does not change the family name, So if Miss Park marries Mr Choi, she remains a Park, but any children are Choi.

Next, the Given names, and oddly enough. I think this is the best I could give you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_given_names

It shows how the First Syllable is joined with the second to give best results. Nicest part, is it further shows which names are male, female, and unisex. I.E. my wife is Jung-Min (정민): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jung-min, and that name can be given to both Boys and Girls.
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Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #26 on: 17 September 2019, 11:34:22 »
I would really like to add something useful to the community by throwing in my german, but I don't know if I did understand the spreadsheet correctly.
So for example, if I put in the name coloumn: [NAME]s Hafen (german for harbour) and the name generator end up on "Karl" the result will be "Karls Hafen", right?

Yes.

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Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #27 on: 17 September 2019, 11:35:35 »
And shes right. I also speak spanish and never saw/read that word in spanish language.

"Aires" (cell 14A) is also a good example of another bad translation and meaning (it is believed that its origin is from the english word "heir" - an anglicism - and has nothing to do with "air(s)" as someone noted there).

Yes, there are several Spanish cases listed for surnames that are junk. I am not sure where they came from. If Spanish-speakers want to help, then please add some that do make sense. Some sensible translations of the English ones would be a good start.
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The Free Company of Oriente - No longer bound by the politics of the great houses, the Free Company of Oriente seeks its fate and fortune among the stars.
Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

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Taharqa

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #28 on: 17 September 2019, 11:36:03 »
I think you could save A LOT of work if you simply got the random generator to put out rough results, without much regard for grammar and suffixes, and then let native speakers in each language go through the results to correct them.

Thats pretty much what we will be doing.
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Ronin Cat Avengers - Fleeing the destruction of their Clan across an Inner Sphere at war, the Ronin Cat Avengers seek a new home ... and vengeance.

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kaliban

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Re: Dev's looking for help from players that speak multiple languages.
« Reply #29 on: 17 September 2019, 12:36:05 »
It seems that all name addition I did in Portuguese were deleted. Any reason?

 

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