Randomizing Names
I built a tool to help me with generate lists of names (or words) that are consistent enough to seem like they're from some vaguely foreign culture. I did this to help with the creation of adventuring venues for tabletop role-playing games (Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever), but you could also use it to inform your short-story writing, CRPG content generation or whatever. Anyway, I wanted to share it because I think it's pretty cool and others might get use from it.
I do this by using a bank of "cultures" (really just columns in a spreadsheet) each with a list of names broken up roughly into syllables, and then procedurally determining some rules about the language to be created, the source of the syllables that go into the language and then assembling names by following those rules.
You can access the tool (A Google Sheet) here. To generate a new list, change the value in cell A1 of the front worksheet and it will redo all the calculations.
If you want to tinker with it, please make a copy of the document and mess with that. In the Syllable Bank (the third worksheet), you can see the columns of originating names. If you don't like some, you can remove them -- name by name or column by column. You can also append new names or columns and they'll automatically be picked up by the name generator. you can also dig around in the forumlae on the first two sheets if you want a look under the hood or to make modifications. Ask if you have specific questions!
Anyway, you're free to use the tool or the resulting names, but it'd be cool to credit me if you do more than just use it for your own amusement.
And let me know if you like this sort of generator -- I like making them and I'm just testing if this is the kind of thing Steemit has room for.
