Jou, Name Generator

A simple name generator by using patterns in existing names.

A simple side project by Brehanu Bugg.

Introduction

After waking up with the sudden urge to have my computer generate random names, I immediately opened up my computer and opened a new Python file, not knowing where exactly to start. How do you get the computer to create something as complex as a name? I started looking at popular names for example:

• Sofia

• Luke

• Emily

I realized every name is composed of syllables. Syllables themselves are composed of vowel/consonant pairs. Given that, I created a simple program to generate a name given a name structure of consonant/vowel/consonant/vowel and here were some examples:

1. Fola

2. Zewo

3. Higa

This was a start, but I wanted something more advanced. And that was when I started analyzing names using the power of Python.

Name Analysis

In the repository, you'll see an analysis.py file. I used this to find patterns in a list of 18,000 names I downloaded from online. And this was some data I collected:

• Most names have 3-7 letters, the most common being 6 letters at 26.21%

• 86.21% of names start with a consonant

• Syllables could be 2 or 3 letters

Given that data, I quickly was able to create a table (which is MAPPED_LETTERS in main.py) of each letter, and how frequently they appeared in names.txt. I also created the function chose_by_probability() that used weighted probability to return a letter using the MAPPED_LETTERS table.

Names appeared slightly better, but not quite what I wanted.

Syllables

The biggest factor in a successful name is the syllable: the building block of a name. For this, I took a small subset of real names and analyzed them by hand. I noticed some recurring syllable structures:

• consonant/vowel

• vowel/consonant

• consonant/vowel/consonant

• vowel

• consonant

I modified the make_syllable() function to chose one of the above syllable structures and populate the syllable according to the structure. Depending on whether or not the next letter is a vowel or consonant, it randomly choses a SUBSET_LIMIT amount of them and then choses a random letter from that random list based on chose_by_probability() which uses weighted probability.

The names improved drastically, but I needed a way to filter out the names that weren't "good".

The Grading System

Much like a search algorithm, my program only works as well as the parameters given. In the search algorithms, the better the heuristic, the better the search path. For this name generator program, I implemeted a grade_name() function based on important information gathered from analysis.py:

• Most names have 3-7 letters, the most common being 6 letters at 26.21%

• 86.21% of names start with a consonant

• Most names have at least 2 vowels

• Most names have more consonants than vowels

Taking in a name, the grade_name() function grades it based on the above criteria and returns a grade between 0-100. In the __main__ function in main.py, it generates 18,000 names and weeds out the ones with a grade less than 75%. There are some noticable tweaks that could be made to better the algorithm:

• Increasing the "passing" grade from 75% to 90% (which comes at a risk for removing names that are good, but don't pass the grade requirement)

• Adding another criteria for grading the likeliness for each letter to follow the one before it in the name (this would require a Markov chain--which is implemented--but could remove the "computer touch" for the generated names)

• Counting how many syllables it has (this is not implemented but it would be interesting to see what it would consider a good syllable count)

Results

This program generated some interesting names to say the least. Here are some of the most noticeable ones:

• Daniyal

• Assi

• Becaa

• Yale

• Yee

Suprisingly enough, this program randomly creates real names as well:

• Sam

• Michael

• Liz

• Iris

• Roy

And it created real words:

• Since

• Yes

• Lily

• Terra

• Rest

Conclusion

Although the idea for the program proved to be a simple concept (create a name), the thinking and process behind it was interesting. It required me to find real names, analyze them (with the computer's help), and modifiying the algorithm based on new information I found.

And while this program is far from perfect, it does what I wanted. You can pronounce all the names. Some sound foreign, some sound cool, and some sound very similar to real names.