Soldier names

[papamaanbeer]

Ok, wanting to contribute I made two files.
One for Belgium containing both Flemish and French names, and one for the Netherlands.
I included comments in the file, I assume that the yaml parser won't barf on it. 

thank you for this!
i am a dutch guy

[Macress]

Hullo! THE BAR from SA here, I've just changed the Danish names into some that made more sense, most notably putting in Å and Ø where applicable and adding in a few more first male names.

Keep up the good work, this really is the best thing that has happened to X-COM since, well, its launch.

[Volutar]

Hey, if I rename whole russian names to russian alphabet and Chinese to glyphs, will you get how they named actually?

Names must be internationalized, 26 latin letters A-Z, a-z, no more.

[Lord Hoot]

Nigerian units must be 100% black. And chineese - yellow, but currently there is no such ratio for each nation, this it would be more confident to keep any mono-racial nation from adding to xcom before that ratio will be implemented.

What about the Japanese?

[Mr. Quiet]

Chinese. I've used western forenames, because 1. it's easier for me, 2. Chinese people working for an international organization will usually adopt a western name and 3. it makes more sense if you plan to make forenames interchangeable between nationalities to some extent.

I've tried to use western names that are commonly chosen by Chinese/Taiwanese people.

I liked that Chinese list you made and gave me an idea for American names. Give Americans all simple western names, but add foreign last names from EU, Asia, Latin America, Africa, where ever to the list. The American list will have a huge Last name list, but it'll work with simple western first names. Then change Chinese first names to real Chinese names, so we know they're 100% Chinese or mix it with Western names, because it's true, most girls I know online will pick up a simple English name for me to call them, but I prefer native names

[Volutar]

Hey, these is not about COUNTRY, it's about NATION: race+name, it doesn't matter what country he came from. There's no such info in soldier.

[turbor]

Hey, these is not about COUNTRY, it's about NATION

What ?!    
How do you distinguish between 'NATION' and 'COUNTRY' ?
Going with the wikipedia definition I would have to split Belgium into a Flemish and Walloon nation?!
Or using an other definition (based on history), would you lump all of Europe together in one EURO nation??
This seems a very weird point you're making here.

[Warboy1982]

i think he means nationALITY

[moriarty]

I guess Volutar is saying that people from a certain "race" a.k.a. people native to a certain region of the earth (either still within their home country or living anywhere else) will tend to use names from their original home. which isn't always true, though. I don't know how we could implement that in a realistic way.

I'd say we just keep "race" (= skin color of the soldier sprite) and names (= usage of a certain nameset) independent from each other. If a soldier comes from a certain country, he/she will use a name from that country's nameset. soldier skin color and hairstyle stay completely random.

otherwise, we would need to compile a set of data about probability of skin coloring for people from each country, and that would be a) tedious and b) potentially controversial (in terms of starting a "that's racist!" flamewar)...

[Volutar]

i was saying that migrants shouldn't be considered at all. only homeland and native namesets + race should be considered.
latins from usa will be 100% latins from south america. no difference at all. they already have their race+namesets as "spanish" for instance.

[moriarty]

so you would always link specific names to a specific "race"? that's kind of weird, though, because in the real world you see a lot of people with a migration background and completely different names.

I kind of enjoy soldiers with names that don't match their expected "race". gives me a feeling of "this is a global organization, all of earth united against the aliens".

[Volutar]

not specific race, but ratio of races. hell, why Julia cannot be a male? The same reason is for races+names.
"Lot of people" is too optimistic.
You'll find nearly 0.001% of black russians.

[Lord Hoot]

I don't personally see why that matters a great deal, in the alternative SF world of XCom.

Here are some Indian (Hindi) names

[SupSuper]

Let us not mix "realistic" and "believable". Yes in the real world anyone can use any combination of any words of any language of any race of any nationality for their name as they see fit, because reality is completely random and silly and follows no rules. But applying this to the game would just create completely random gibberish names, no matter how "real", they would not be very "believable".

So let's not overcomplicate things and just stick to regular native names.

[Raguson]

I've been going through name lists online to try and compile huge lists for OpenXcom so the poor bastards I throw up against the alien menace have really diverse backgrounds and interesting names.
Aside from the American name list, I can't say I'm all that well versed in the naming conventions of the nations I've compiled, so if anyone with a more intimate knowledge of that nation wants to get rid of any names that are inaccurate/obsolete/old fashioned/badly transliterated, be my guest.