Friday, March 17, 2023

Former Oku Name Generators


Notes: 

This is, first and foremost, a test to see if the generators will work correctly. If you are not in my IRL play group, do not expect to understand this post or to get a whole lot of context for it. These generators can and will be updated over time.

The standard naming custom in the old Hegemonic heartlands was the Roman-style tria nomina, consisting of praenomen, nomen, and cognomen. The former is roughly equivalent to a given name, the middle to a family name, and the latter is something like a nickname, epithet, or very roughly analogous to a Chinese courtesy or 'style' name. 

Different folk might have different local naming customs:
  • The Okudi frequently adopt multiple and ostentatious or flowery cognomens. 
  • The Hyscenni often name themselves after virtues—Arete, Sophia, Sophrosyne, Pistis, etc... 
  • The Scarabren do not have praemonens and give themselves numerical cognomens, since they recognize one another pheromonally and only adopted names when conquered by the Hegemony. 
  • The Anx use simple mononyms, but are given to naming themselves after religious or historical figures with particular frequency.
  • The Kovans use matronymic surnames of the form -sson or -sdottir, and often retain the old tria nomina structure of the Hegemony.
  • The Tolmid have secret truenames that are typically extremely long and difficult to pronounce, full of challenging clusters of consonants. These are kept closely guarded.
  • The Qi-Fadhi acquire more given names at significant stages in life, and consider it very rude to not address someone by their full name.
As always, feel free to invent fantastical names or draw naming inspiration from other sources. Broadly speaking, I devised the naming tables in the following way: Hegemonist names draw from Chinese, GreekLatin, and Persian naming, while Uyenaic names draw from Mongolian, Hebrew, Arabic, old Germanic, Korean, and Carthaginian naming. There are other combinations you could make for specific folk: the Hyscenni are more Greek, the Tolmid have something of both Vietnam and Egypt, the Kovans could be somewhat Carthaginian and perhaps also a bit Korean, etc... but the naming generator does not have that level of resolution and is intended more to give a broad-strokes impression. 

It is entirely reasonable to assemble your own name based on bits and pieces provided by the generator. For people living in border regions, you may use either generator, or mix-and-match. On account of the essential nature of empire, there will always be people with every sort of name living in every part of the former Hegemony.

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