Easily Paleo-ified with some tweaks to the stir-fry sauce.

Keep Your Hands Off Dolmistaska!

Naming Countries, Regions, Continents, or Planets

The first thing to consider is whether your world is a fantasy world or the real world–and by “real world” I mainly mean sci-fi that’s supposed to take place in our galaxy or universe, because then as far as planets go, you probably want to look at how we’ve named existing planets and use that as a guide. Mythology is a big influencer in the names of planets and moons in our solar system. Also, in that case, consider who is naming the planet. If the planet is being colonized by a federation of Spanish-speaking countries, you might consider Spanish words and names. If the planet is being colonized by a conglomerate of mining corporations, maybe the planet’s name would be a nod to the corporation somehow, like the surname of the parent company’s founder, or perhaps the name of the current CEO’s daughter, or maybe just some kind of rock or mining reference.

If you’re creating a fantasy world, the best thing you can do is start by creating a rough map of the planet, continents, countries, and regions–at least to the extent of what’s important in your story. If a particular continent or area isn’t ever referenced in your story, no point in bothering with it. Remember to draw in things like mountains, lakes and rivers, deserts, jungles, cold areas and tropical areas, as these will help you imagine who lives in these places. Which is your next task–you need to decide on the racial and cultural groups that inhabit these areas. You might consider using bits of real world cultures as light inspiration for these different groups–again, inspiration rather than taking direct elements–then you can start to figure out what their language sounds like. If you have a group that you imagine as being similar to Tibetan monks but living in something more like the Amazon rain forest, you might try words that sound a little bit like one of the Tibetan languages, but with a bit of Spanish flair. These would be made up words, obviously, but that’s the fun part. You can try looking up words in a particular language, then combining them with parts of words from another language.It all just depends on the requirements of the world you’re creating. Another thing you can try is combining general words. List out some interesting words. I’ll start with moons in our solar system:GanymedeIoEncedalusCallistoEuropaTritonCharonPhobosLapetusTethysOberonNow, consider some new words you can make using elements of these words:Ganymede > TenamedeIo > ZioEncedalus > CrydalusCallisto > CalbrionEuropa > ZenypaAnd so on…One other thing you can try is a random word generators. Just google it and you should find some. Typically you can find ones that allow you to put in several different words, and it finds different ways to combine them. This can be a great way to come up with place names.

And finally, never underestimate the value of a good baby name web site, especially ones that have lists of unusual names or names in different languages. There’s nothing that says a planet couldn’t be named Erith or Zebulon. 

Last year I trained a neural net to generate new names for kittens, by giving it a list of over 8,000 existing cat names to imitate. Starting from scratch, with zero knowledge of English or any context for the words and letter combinations it was trying out, it tried to predict what letters might be found in cat names, and in which order. Its names ranged from the strange to the completely nonsensical to the highly unfortunate (Retchion, Hurler, and Trickles were some of its suggestions). Without knowledge of English beyond its list of cat names, it didn’t know what letter combinations to avoid.

So I decided to revisit the cat-naming problem, this time using a neural net that had a lot more context. GPT-2, trained by OpenAI on a huge chunk of the internet, knows which words and letter combinations tend to be used together on the English-language internet. It also has (mostly) figured out which words and letter combinations to avoid, at least in some contexts (though it does tend to suddenly switch contexts, and then, yikes).

When I trained GPT-2 on the list of cat names using Max Woolf’s colab notebook, it still retained a lot of what it had learned from the rest of the internet. Gone were the strange names like “Tilly-Mapper” and “Balllucidoux” - it had a bunch of real words it could use instead. Here are some of the names it came up with - and the Morris Animal Refuge (who you may remember from that time they used neural net names for their guinea pigs) has given some of these names to some highly adoptable kittens.

First, neural net can do fancy:

Taffeta Pompompur Monocle Tom Glitter Notion Tinnitus Cheesemonger M. Tinklesby Linklater Soap

It can also do the opposite of fancy:

Scat Cat Butthole Gangrene Moisture Grotesque Petard Oilbag Buttwig The Cream Meatbag Dr Fart Fudge Putty Scumbag Constipation BUTT

And it can also do names ranging from tough to downright sinister:

Miss Vulgar Lillith The Vamp Elle Fury Deadbolt Romeo of Darkness Starmaker Fist Warning Signs Bibles Smoked The Firestarter Higher Rune Scarlet Be Thy Coat Kill All Humans Bones Of The Master Mr. Sinister Evil Whispers Spawn Serendipitous Kill Stranglehold

(Starmaker and Sparky Buttons are from a litter that had upper respiratory infections that damaged their eyes, but even though their world is kinda cloudy, they love to play and cuddle.)

I’m a particular fan of the Very Weird cat names:

Honeystring Dr Leg Tom Noodle Pinball Scene Peanutbutterjiggles You’re Telling A Lie Beep Boop Thoughts Bobble Bun Atmosphere You Name It Whiskeridoo Sparky Buttons

Seemingly This Guy Various Authors Chicken Whiskey Fish Especially Thelonious Monsieur Ringo Shuffles Sweet Cakes EXTAs (Eye Stalks) Checker Spin Donut Quin Two Patz Grandpa He Glad Funky Moe Fluttering Feelers Accepted A Tribute Chewie Bean PLEASE Gregory Chimney Notable PRODUCT LEGEND Weird Science Platinum Not Suitable For Character the Enforcer

Did I mention these cats are adoptable? If you live near Philadelphia, you live near these kitties!

I say that having watched BoJack Horseman. The difference is that BoJack is about mental health and cultural critique whereas Tuca & Bertie is about friendship and adulting. The former is cynical, the latter is indulgent. Both have merit. I just want more indulgence.

Okay. So, assume every woman had her daughter at 20 instead. 

That’s five mothers in a century. 

Fifty mothers in a thousand years. 

One hundred mothers in two thousand years. 

That is five hundred and seventy five mothers since the dawn of agriculture. 

Less than six hundred women, between you and the dawn of civilization.