[Markmeister]

Hey,

Started on a project of a historical first names sets. This project arose because I wanted a name set that had the nicknames added into the name set like you see in the Lahman data base. That way I could have players known by Cap, Babe, Chief, etc.

I am also planning on adding some additional nicknames for flavor. These will be actual nicknames for each period cleaned up to remove nicknames that don't sound right as first names (so you won't be seeing The Old Fox Jones). This will probably phase out (I still need to figure out when to phase them out). I believe adding nicknames is accurate though as the historical players born in the 1880s had roughly 9% of their names also showing up on the nickname list.

Process is going good once I got the basic spreadsheet set up. The sets for players born in the 1880s and 1890s are initially done. I need to clean them up though as the info from Social Security is a mess for those years. For example, both sets include the name Unknown and Wm. and there are spelling issues and female names mixed in. I am assuming most of these are errors (for example Martha and Willian) as these names don't appear in the male name lists after 1899. Some of the odd names, however, run through the 1920s and 1930s so I am assuming that these are correct.

The next step is to compile the 1900 and 1910 lists so I can cross reference these with 1880 and 1890 to help find the errors.

The final pack will contain 2 name set types. A startup set for creating your game and a draft set. For example, you would use the 1920 startup set which would contain a mxture names of players born from 1880 to 1909 (players born in the 1900s would be coming into the draft during the 1920s and there should be some players born in the 1880s at the tail end of their careers) then you would replace the name set with the 1920 draft set followed by the 1930 draft set, etc.

I should have the initial sets released for people to try later this week.