Re: Names (was Re: Hello again)

[Erik Sigra <sigra at home dot se>]

måndagen den 12 februari 2001 17:17 skrev Stan Shebs:
> Erik Sigra wrote:
> > <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/xconq7/2001/msg00070.html>
> > <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/xconq7/2001/msg00071.html>
> > <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/xconq7/2001/msg00075.html>
>
> The city name lists are short because there were a lot of
> countries to do, so it's good to have more names.
>
> That said, and also based on watching the FreeCiv discussion
> on the same topic, this exposes a whole set of cultural
> issues.  As I see it, there are several kinds of names, and
> people react differently to each kind:
>
> 1. Names that are culturally or historically important, like
> London or Rome.  Get these wrong and everybody hates you.
>
> 2. Names that are important, but tied to eras.  Only members
> of the culture or avid historians know or care whether it's
> New Amsterdam or New York, St Petersburg or Leningrad.

Maybe more people than you think cares. A lot of people are members of 1 or 
more cultures, and this kind of games attracts a lot of historically 
interested people.

> 3. Obscure names.  Members of the culture like them, everybody
> else is mystified.  For instance, La Grange is funny to Americans
> of a certain age, but nobody else, and Moab is only amusing if
> you've visited that part of Utah.  Some of the Finnish towns are
> probably hilarious to Finns, but mean nothing to me.

I believe all of the Finnish towns are real towns in the state of Finland 
from 1945 to this day. Wether they are hilarious to Finns I haven't given a 
thought. I think the Finnish towns are there for the Finns.

> 4. Names that are funny to other cultures.  Much of town-names.g
> is like that.  Only a nerd thinks Munger Junction is funny, and
> Wankers Corner is only special to the British. :-)  My wife can
> never get all the way through Poggibonsi without laughing.
>
> 5. Synthetic names.  The goal here is to have an inexhaustible
> supply of plausible-sounding names, and ideally to amuse natives
> and non-natives from time to time.

You seem to focus on the funny aspect of names. Sure, it may be nice if names 
are funny. I was not thinking nearly as much about that as you, but rather 
about the reality aspect; a synthetic name should be likely to be the real 
name of something in that language, and a name in a city list should have 
been under control of the specified state during the specified time period.

I think that not every name has to be funny. I won't get mystified by names 
just because I don't consider them funny.

> No single one of these categories is right for all games.  The
> standard Xconq game is kind of blan^H^H^H^Hgeneric, so it's been
> OK to mix the categories, but I note that the commercial Civ sticks
> to the first category primarily, because these are maximally
> evocative for the most people.  FreeCiv dabbles in 2. and 3.,
> but the process frequently degenerates into nationalistic
> name-calling, an interesting phenomenon, also tells you why PayCivs
> don't go there.
>
> There's not much point in having a really precise categorization
> for lists of names until the game setup machinery gives you a
> little more control over the details of the side you're playing.

There is some point. It's at least more point having a precise categorization 
than not having it. It won't hurt. In fact it would help. Think about the 
Freeciv situation you mentioned (nationalistic name-calling). Suppose that a 
lot of Danes want the Swedish city Lund to be included in the Danish city 
list, because it has been an important Danish city for a significant length 
of time (i think Lund was once the archbishopseat for whole Denmark). Then 
suppose some Swedes would feel hurt about that, claiming that the city is 
Swedish now. With the current Freeciv, no matter what the maintainer chooses 
to do, one of the groups will be pissed of. With precise categorization, the 
maintainer can just add Lund in the correct city lists and the issue is 
settled. Europe is full of cities like Lund.

But why should Xconq have this precise categorization? Xconq doesn't have 
such nationalistic name-calling.
1. To be compatible with Freeciv. One day someone will make Freeciv and Xconq 
use the same installed namers on the users system, because he thinks 
duplication is ugly and difficult to maintain and he wants to save space.
2. When Xconq becomes as popular as Freeciv is now, the issues will also come 
to Xconq.

> Perhaps some kind of a two-level structure - first general side,
> then specific era? Certainly having a "synthetic name" vs "real
> name" variant would be useful.

The freeciv-dev discussions have come to a consensus about the opposite. 
First choose era, then choose from availible sides in that era. It's just not 
sexy enough to have been coded by anyone yet.

Xconq may have different needs. A game that starts in the time of the first 
cultures of the world would allow Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians and such, 
but no Estonians, Catalans and Canadians.

I personally think that the most elegant way to stop the nationalistic issues 
is to only have synthetic names and eventually get rid of most city lists, 
but some Freeciv people would unfortunately oppose that. So I had to make 
this system with precise categorization.