About The Book of Names

First Edition

The first edition of the book of names was completed in 1995. It uses CGI and server-side Perl scripts and accomplishes quite a lot with clever data dictionaries.

The old version allowed you to generate names for fantasy characters with these "racial" backgrounds: Human, Northern male, Northern female, Central, Southern, Mideastern, Eastern, Western, Metropolitan, Elf, Translated elven, Eldar elven, Goblin, Dwarven, Hobbit, Baggins hobbit, Gamgee hobbit, Took hobbit, and Buckland hobbit. It also supported names for these places: Woodland area, Shire, Village, Coastal town, Lowland town, Lowland city, Highland city, Highland stronghold, Minor city, English countryside, Old world, Nordic town, Incan city, Japanese city, and Greek town.

You can still [try it here].

Second Edition

This second edition has had three phases of development. First a much more complex system of models and application of those models. The original edition relied on clever phonic bridging. This system will use that but combines it with Markov chains at character and word levels, and constructs. Second a more modern development approach using Python, Javascript, MySQL, RESTful APIs, caching, query args, and CSS. Third, new data dictionaries and a schema which supports automation across all the data sets. This means that the data dictionary does not necessarily define the model. Different formulas can be applied to the same data set to achieve different results.

Work ahead: back-end

  1. Additional data dictionaries.
  2. model construct-a: embedded evaluation language within text string
  3. Result is {honorific} {first} {last} of {origin town}
  4. Adjust name-formOptions.api to take a heritage input
  5. Move dungeoneer.com over

Work ahead: front-end

  1. Make specific heritage pages and a true index page with quick links.
  2. Show breadcrumb to get to all heritages
  3. Provide a shopping cart which spans all.
  4. In specific page, allow for locations to be restricted or not. But it will be specific to a heritage.
  5. Allow them to choose male or female
  6. Provide FULL names if surnames are avail {first} {last}
  7. Show a nice number
  8. Provide origin towns if avail.
  9. Show futhark and sindarin as well
  10. Where does an ad go?
  11. Copy icon to copy to clipboard
  12. Custom pages for quick full character development. Heritage, Gender, Name First/Last, Name of Location, Traits

Technical Usage Details

The HTML pages are flat but can also accept overriding query arguments. These can also prime the pump and provide results on the first click. These are a similar subset of query args which are accepted by the API.

Query Arguments: Optional String Matches
Query Arguments: Optional Boolean Matches
Query Arguments: Output Options

Try any formula

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Founded on April 30 1995 - Last Modified Tuesday December 31, 2024 - wiz@dungeoneer.com. Copyright © 1995-2025 Dungeoneer.com. All rights reserved.