Better Country Names

[JohnGlave]

I found it rather annoying that in PDM and vanilla that many countries had either non-historical names, like the United States of Central America instead of the Federal Republic of Central America, or simply Central America, or were missing "The"s before their names like in "Crimea" instead of "The Crimea", and that some empires like Austria were not known as "The Austrian Empire". Along with those fixes, I've changed the addresses used in the message system from things like "King" to the more universal "Your Majesty". I didn't want to use KanyeWest's government titles mod because it often made country names disappear because they were too long, and I felt referring to countries by their full title didn't really fit with Victoria.

I've tried to keep the country names feeling close to PDM and vanilla while making them feel professional (adding the "The"s) and historical accurate for the time period, like The Sudan instead of Sudan, and Joseon instead of Korea. All the country names are appropriate for their government type, so republican Brazil isn't called The Empire of Brazil, but just Brazil. I've also included translations to French and German for all the country names I altered (although since they're Google Translated translations I'd love some feedback on whether they're accurate.

Some examples of new country names:

• United States of Central America => Central America (It actually shows up on the map now.)
• Brazil => The Empire of Brazil
• Austria => The Austrian Empire
• Japan => The Greater Japanese Empire
• Ethiopia => The Ethiopian Empire
• Qing Empire => The Great Qing
• Empire of Mexico => The Mexican Empire
• Austria-Hungary => The Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Korea => Joseon

To install simply download and extract the file, then copy it into mod/PDM/localisation

BetterCountryNames.zip

[StratApple]

I get your point with USCA, but i don't see why countries like Japan and Brazil should have "empire" in their name.. Brazil, Japan and Austria's name was officially "Empire of.. ect." but in commin speach they would still just be referred to as Brazil, Auatria & Japan. Frankly i would even rather have Germany and Russia to just to be called "Germany" and "Russia" rather that "German Empire, Russian empire ect." guess it's a matter of taste though

[JohnGlave]

I get your point with USCA, but i don't see why countries like Japan and Brazil should have "empire" in their name.. Brazil, Japan and Austria's name was officially "Empire of.. ect." but in commin speach they would still just be referred to as Brazil, Auatria & Japan. Frankly i would even rather have Germany and Russia to just to be called "Germany" and "Russia" rather that "German Empire, Russian empire ect." guess it's a matter of taste though

I agree, but the reason I like having empire in the name with those countries is because in vanilla and so far in PDM, empires seem to be an exception to the "don't use the full government title" rule; that's why I feel the other empires of the time should be named as such.

[HerrPanzer]

I used to collect old maps. Although I don't have much time for it any more, I always liked the way older maps had a look to them and the zoomed out map on Vic2 kinda of has that feeling. British North America scrawled over Canada, Russian Empire an impressive blob, etc. There doesn't seem to have been any hard and fast rules about which form to take, I have some maps from the 19th century with just "Russia" and not "The Russian Empire", but I would say the tendency seems to be pre-WW1, if there was room, to use long form names on maps, and post-WW1 maps, even historical ones seem to tend towards using shortforms. I even have a few old maps which don't use "France", but the "French Republic", and "Kingdom of Italy" instead of "Italy".

Since there doesn't seem to have been a hard and fast rule about which form to use, I guess it comes down to personal choice. Personally I think the long form names look more era-appropriate. But that is just me. Since there does seem to be some kind of sizing calculation the game makes about which names to display, I wonder if it's possible for countries to have 2 optional names.
For example,
1) if there is enough room on the map, preference given to a) Empire of ... or .... Empire names (kingdom, republic, etc)
2) if not enough room for a), use b) Austria, Russia, Brazil, etc
3) if not enough room for b), show nothing


On a side note, I had some really interesting map notes in my current Russia game. I attacked the Ottomans and took Kars, Van, and Diybibakir. This cut Iraq off from the empire and the map displayed "Ottoman Empire" over Turkey and "Ottoman Asia" over Iraq. A while later I took Mosul and Baghdad. Now it's "Ottoman Empire" and "Ottoman Iraq" displayed over the last southern Iraqi state still in Ottoman hands. I thought that was pretty nifty .

[Rylock]

Since there does seem to be some kind of sizing calculation the game makes about which names to display, I wonder if it's possible for countries to have 2 optional names.

It's not-- that's a change Paradox would have to make. Hence why I refuse to use really long names on any countries except those you can generally expect to be large (like the USA), as the alternative is to have almost no names actually displaying on the screen. Considering the displayed name is also how the countries are sorted alphabetically in the diplomacy list, having all names start with "the" or "Republic" or "Kingdom" makes it very hard to find anyone.

On a side note, I had some really interesting map notes in my current Russia game. I attacked the Ottomans and took Kars, Van, and Diybibakir. This cut Iraq off from the empire and the map displayed "Ottoman Empire" over Turkey and "Ottoman Asia" over Iraq. A while later I took Mosul and Baghdad. Now it's "Ottoman Empire" and "Ottoman Iraq" displayed over the last southern Iraqi state still in Ottoman hands. I thought that was pretty nifty .

Yeah, that's some cleverness on Paradox's part. If a country's territory (which isn't contiguous with its capital) has a majority of a single core (like Iraq) then it displays that in the name ("Ottoman Iraq"). If no core has a majority, or the majority core is the owning country's, then the name is the continent ("Ottoman Asia").