name-generator

A random character name generator for fantasy settings.

Web app

The name generator is accessible online at https://caleblf.github.io/name-generator/.

Languages

Language files specify the generation of names using a probabilistic context-free grammar or Markov chain.

Language Transforms

Additional output can be added to the generated names using "Transforms." Transforms are specified in files similarly to languages. When multiple transforms are active, they are applied sucessively to the generated output in order of increasing priority.

PCFG Specifier Language Specification

A string is a "name" if and only if it is comprised only of lowercase alphanumeric ASCII characters and dashes, and begins with a lowercase letter.

At the start of the file are any number of lines beginning with !. These comprise the header. Each line of the header looks like the following:

!field: value

This defines a header property field with value value. Field names must be names as specified above. Leading and trailing spaces are trimmed from the value string. Header lines must not be indented. Blank lines are allowed in the header, though all header lines must appear before all forms.

The fields usually defined include: encoding (utf-8 if not specified), name, author, description, root (the name of the tag of the root form), and priority (the display priority; lower priorities are shown first).

After the header lines, the file is comprised of form entries which look something like:

form-tag:
  expansion1
  expansion2
  2 expansion3
  1.5 expansion4

Form tags must be names.

A form must have at least one expansion. If a form has exactly one expansion; if so, that expansion may appear on the same line as the form tag after the colon. Otherwise, all expansions must be listed on individual lines following the form tag, each indented by any amount of spaces (no tabs).

An expansion entry defines a weight and the form expansion itself. If the entry begins with a number (integer or decimal numeral), that is used as the weight, and the rest of the line (spaces trimmed) is the form expansion. If no explicit weight is given, the weight for the line defaults to 1.

If a form tag has one expansion, that expansion cannot be a form tag.

A form expansion may be any of the following:

1. A bare literal: literal text. Spaces are trimmed from the edges of the string. The string must be nonempty, and cannot contain any of the following characters: $, :, [, ], !, ", tabs, spaces, and numerals.

2. A quoted literal: "literal text". The content may not contain backslashes or double-quotes.

3. A concatenation of form expansions: [form1 form2 form3]. The forms to concatenate may be bare literals, quoted literals, or form tags. Forms are delimited by spaces.

4. A form tag: $form-tag. The form tag must refer to a form listed in the file, or to an input tag defined in the header.

Anywhere in the file, a # character is accepted. The # and all following characters on the line are ignored by the parser.

Building the web app

Building the web app requires:

• UglifyJS 3
• Elm 0.19.1