Hybrid Culture Naming System

[guinea prince]

So, this might be my bias growing up in the Pacific. We're kinduv a mix of melting pot and hybrid cultures, you'd have Chamorru, Filipino, Palauan, Marshallese, Chuukese, Yapese, Pohnpeian and more, Americans, Koreans, Japanese. You'd have islanders whose families at some point married into Korean or American or Japanese families, Spanish and sometimes German colonial influences and the influence of the Japanese Pacific empire and current American relationships. Basically there was a whole ton of assimilation, mixing, cross-cultural exposure. You can argue that under CK3 mechanics, some hybrid culture would have emerged that took elements of the indigenous Micronesian people and those of the various neighbours and colonizers.

And honestly, the mixed names list speaks to me. Today we have people with names that are traditionally Chamorru or Palauan or some flavour of Filipino, but plenty of names that are German or Japanese or Korean and more. I had an Ethelbert as a classmate in gradeschool, what's an Ethelbert doing way out here? And while sure, over time and trends some names might start taking local flavour, there isn't really translating all these names into a hybrid state or into the dominant language. Joseph is Joseph, Frank is Frank, Suzuki is Suzuki, de leon Guererro is still de leon Guerrero, Hofschneiders are still Hofschneiders. You might have a Mark and a Marcus together, and nobody bats an eye.

Basically, my vote is all for the hybrid names list just slapping both culture names list together. It's what we do. If I remember the dev diary correctly, if one prefers the aesthetics of a specific culture's naming list, wouldn't you just pick that culture's list instead?

 

[Pischinovski]

So, this might be my bias growing up in the Pacific. We're kinduv a mix of melting pot and hybrid cultures, you'd have Chamorru, Filipino, Palauan, Marshallese, Chuukese, Yapese, Pohnpeian and more, Americans, Koreans, Japanese. You'd have islanders whose families at some point married into Korean or American or Japanese families, Spanish and sometimes German colonial influences and the influence of the Japanese Pacific empire and current American relationships. Basically there was a whole ton of assimilation, mixing, cross-cultural exposure. You can argue that under CK3 mechanics, some hybrid culture would have emerged that took elements of the indigenous Micronesian people and those of the various neighbours and colonizers.

And honestly, the mixed names list speaks to me. Today we have people with names that are traditionally Chamorru or Palauan or some flavour of Filipino, but plenty of names that are German or Japanese or Korean and more. I had an Ethelbert as a classmate in gradeschool, what's an Ethelbert doing way out here? And while sure, over time and trends some names might start taking local flavour, there isn't really translating all these names into a hybrid state or into the dominant language. Joseph is Joseph, Frank is Frank, Suzuki is Suzuki, de leon Guererro is still de leon Guerrero, Hofschneiders are still Hofschneiders. You might have a Mark and a Marcus together, and nobody bats an eye.

Basically, my vote is all for the hybrid names list just slapping both culture names list together. It's what we do. If I remember the dev diary correctly, if one prefers the aesthetics of a specific culture's naming list, wouldn't you just pick that culture's list instead?

While I wholeheartedly agree that my proposal would make no sense in a modern setting, I think we have to take into regard how names were handled in the Middle Ages.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

While I wholeheartedly agree that my proposal would make no sense in a modern setting, I think we have to take into regard how names were handled in the Middle Ages.

In which case, at least for a lot of Europe, everyone would be <saint name> <profession> if they weren't noble or <saint name> <primary title>. In some cases it'd be <saint name> <patronym/matronym>. The dynasty names we work with largely weren't considered as such.

If of course they needed to distinguish which person with their name was.

 

[Jimboy93]

This feature would be pretty cool, but it would be a lot of work considering how certain names are pronounced in different languages.

German: Heinrich
Dutch: Hendrik
Danish: Henrik
English: Henry
French: Henri
Italian: Enrico
Spanish: Enrique

 

[solamyas]

This feature would be pretty cool, but it would be a lot of work considering how certain names are pronounced in different languages.

German: Heinrich
Dutch: Hendrik
Danish: Henrik
English: Henry
French: Henri
Italian: Enrico
Spanish: Enrique

They look similar compared to Jindřich the Czech

 

[Aquamancer]

So, this might be my bias growing up in the Pacific. We're kinduv a mix of melting pot and hybrid cultures, you'd have Chamorru, Filipino, Palauan, Marshallese, Chuukese, Yapese, Pohnpeian and more, Americans, Koreans, Japanese. You'd have islanders whose families at some point married into Korean or American or Japanese families, Spanish and sometimes German colonial influences and the influence of the Japanese Pacific empire and current American relationships. Basically there was a whole ton of assimilation, mixing, cross-cultural exposure. You can argue that under CK3 mechanics, some hybrid culture would have emerged that took elements of the indigenous Micronesian people and those of the various neighbours and colonizers.

And honestly, the mixed names list speaks to me. Today we have people with names that are traditionally Chamorru or Palauan or some flavour of Filipino, but plenty of names that are German or Japanese or Korean and more. I had an Ethelbert as a classmate in gradeschool, what's an Ethelbert doing way out here? And while sure, over time and trends some names might start taking local flavour, there isn't really translating all these names into a hybrid state or into the dominant language. Joseph is Joseph, Frank is Frank, Suzuki is Suzuki, de leon Guererro is still de leon Guerrero, Hofschneiders are still Hofschneiders. You might have a Mark and a Marcus together, and nobody bats an eye.

Basically, my vote is all for the hybrid names list just slapping both culture names list together. It's what we do. If I remember the dev diary correctly, if one prefers the aesthetics of a specific culture's naming list, wouldn't you just pick that culture's list instead?

Sure, but those mixes of cultures emerged within the past two hundred years as a result of colonialism, which led to a type of multiculturalism that simply wasn't present in CK3's timespan. Should we really base the game's culture mechanics on what happened after the game's timespan, in an area of the map that isn't even present in-game?

Besides, the game covers a period of almost 600 years, so it'd be pretty unreasonable to assume that the names would stay the same, and not change under the influence of different language and linguistic changes: not to mention that it'd be pretty unrealistic for a culture to have words from two languages with very different phoneme inventories and expect the names to stay unchanged.