Tiny Frog Software

I spent the morning creating a random name generator which will be added to the ‘create character’ section of Caverns of Underkeep.

I’ll explain how it works in a minute. But for now, here is an example list of names:

• Yivha
• Ilhalo
• Xagloh
• Pojlo
• Xifei
• Coxfo
• Cedtiz
• Digja
• Emrapo
• Aygoh
• Omgez

So not bad, sorta could be real-made-up fantasy character names maybe. This is how the algorithm works:

First of all, I did a little bit of research reading about syllables on wikipedia

I decided to create two different name types – Those that start with a vowel, and those that don’t. For the names that start with a vowel I use the form VCC-VCV

Where C = consonant and V = Vowel

For names that start with a consonant I use the form CVC-CVC

In each case I randomly determine if the name length is 5 or 6 characters long. If the length is 5 characters, then I just leave off the last letter in the string.

Thats it!

Obviously it’s very simple and I don’t do any weightings against uncommon letters like x or z or anything like that. But it gets the job done

If anyone is interested the java source code is avalible here