American-Ethnic Namesets

[jotro]

Thanks for these!

[joefromchicago]

DUTCH-AMERICAN NAMES (nameset 6)

2.5% of American population

The biggest hurdle here was handling names beginning with the place identifiers "van," "van de," and "van der." In general, "van" is a separate lower-case prefix (as in "van Buren"), while "van de" and "van der" are connected to the name (as in "Vanderbilt"). Other common spelling changes:

• "kk" changed to "ck" (e.g. "Dekker" changed to "Decker");
• final single letters following short vowels in single-syllable names doubled (e.g. "Stam" changed to "Stamm");
• "dijk" changed, in some cases, to "dyke."

Sources that I used include:

• Nederlandse Familienamen Top 10.000 « Naamkunde
• Browse Dutch Surnames (Last Names) - FamilyEducation.com

Some prominent Dutch-American ballplayers include:

• Kiki Cuyler
• Jim Kaat
• Justin Verlander
• Bert Blyleven
• Lenny Dykstra
• Andy Van Slyke
• Curt Schilling

6 dutch-american first names.txt

6 dutch-american names.txt

[Charlie Hough]

You forgot Johnny Vander Meer, the man who threw back-to-back no-hitters! Now there's a feat that may truly never be matched.

[txranger]

Many thanks for your work on these... It is greatly appreciated...

[joefromchicago]

CZECH-AMERICAN NAMES (nameset 14)

0.9% of American population (Czech and Slovak combined)

Czech spelling is even more challenging than Polish, if that's possible. Some of the changes that I've made to "Americanize" the names:

• Changing "č"and "š" to "ch" and "sh" in some names to reflect pronunciation;
• Changing terminal -c in certain names to -cz to reflect pronunciation (actually, the pronunciation is closer to -ts, but -cz is more common in American names);
• Changing Sv- at the beginning of some names to Sw- to reflect pronunciation;
• Elimination of feminine -ova name endings, as well as -ov endings which appear to have been the result of a mistaken attempt at back-forming masculine names (that's not how it's done in Czech);
• Elimination of German names and, where possible, Hungarian and Polish names.

Some of the sources that I used include:

• ?eská p?íjmení ? Wikipedie
• Èetnost èeských pøíjmení
• Philips Sonicare - FamilyEducation.com

Some prominent Czech-American and Slovak-American ballplayers include:

• Andy Benes
• Ron Swoboda
• Jason Varitek
• Al Hrabosky (he might have been the "Mad Hungarian," but his name is Czech)
• Kent Hrbek

14 Czech-American first names.txt

14 Czech-American names.txt

[joefromchicago]

Regrettably, I could not find any support in the sources for this Czech name:

• Kantplaysky,1,14

Maybe it's Russian.

[khucke]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

DUTCH-AMERICAN NAMES (nameset 6)

2.5% of American population

The biggest hurdle here was handling names beginning with the place identifiers "van," "van de," and "van der." In general, "van" is a separate lower-case prefix (as in "van Buren"), while "van de" and "van der" are connected to the name (as in "Vanderbilt"). Other common spelling changes:

• "kk" changed to "ck" (e.g. "Dekker" changed to "Decker");
• final single letters following short vowels in single-syllable names doubled (e.g. "Stam" changed to "Stamm");
• "dijk" changed, in some cases, to "dyke."

Sources that I used include:

• Nederlandse Familienamen Top 10.000 « Naamkunde
• Browse Dutch Surnames (Last Names) - FamilyEducation.com

Some prominent Dutch-American ballplayers include:

• Kiki Cuyler
• Jim Kaat
• Justin Verlander
• Bert Blyleven
• Lenny Dykstra
• Andy Van Slyke
• Curt Schilling

Attachment 331755

Attachment 331756

Just a very minor note:

I'm almost certain that the name Verlander is of Swedish origin, not Dutch and Schilling is a very common German name, may be Dutch too though.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by khucke

Just a very minor note:

I'm almost certain that the name Verlander is of Swedish origin, not Dutch and Schilling is a very common German name, may be Dutch too though.

Take it up with the good folks at Wikipedia:

List of Dutch Americans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[joefromchicago]

SWEDISH-AMERICAN NAMES (nameset 12)

1.4% of American population

Swedish names consist of a limited number of stems followed by an even more limited number of suffixes: -lund, -strom, -berg, -quist, -gren, -strand, -vall, -stedt, and, most importantly, -sson. The most frequent names - Andersson, Johansson, and Karlsson - are very frequent. Some of the changes I've made to "Americanize" these names include:

• changing all -kvist and -qvist endings to -quist;
• changing many Sj- and Skö- combinations at the beginnings of names to Sh- to reflect pronunciation;
• Changing some -vall endings and initial V's to -wall and W's respectively to reflect pronunciation.

Sources that I used include:

• Vanliga efternamn, alfabetiskt ordnade.
• Last names, top 100 - Statistiska centralbyrån
• Browse Swedish Surnames (Last Names) - FamilyEducation.com

Some prominent Swedish-American ballplayers include:

• Fred Lindstrom
• Walter Johnson
• Dave Nilsson
• Matt Lindstrom
• Jim Sundberg
• Eric Soderholm

12 Swedish-American first names.txt

12 Swedish-American names.txt

[joefromchicago]

That's the last of the American-Ethnic namesets that I have prepared. There are several more that I'd like to do, but I have nothing planned at the moment. To recap (with the number of names included in the OOTP namesets and my namesets):

Nameset        OOTP     American-Ethnic
6 Dutch        1231      1407
7 German       2349      2256
9 Italian      1809      2116
12 Swedish      809       941
14 Czech       1306      1367
15 Polish      1216      1237
16 Scottish     429      1019
18 Irish       3003      1404
20 English     3713      5545
31 Austrian     244       783
33 Fr. Canad.   999      1381
* Jewish          0      1431

I plan on posting my revised nameset 39 - American Historical, which is designed to complement these American-Ethnic namesets. That project, however, will take some time.

[Carlton]

Do we just add these to the nameset text file? or over write it?

I admit I never even looked at the nameset file

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Carlton

Do we just add these to the nameset text file? or over write it?

The latter. Copy the contents of each of the namesets here and paste them over the correspondingly numbered namesets in the names and firstnames files.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

POLISH-AMERICAN NAMES (nameset 15)

3.2% of American population

There were a fair number of spelling errors that needed to be corrected in this database - not surprising, perhaps, given how daunting Polish spelling can be. All diacritical marks were removed. Some nasalized vowels received an -m (e.g. Dąbrowski was changed to Dambrowski). Russian/Ukrainian names ending in -sky were deleted, as were feminine (-ska) versions of names ending in -ski. Some names were omitted to avoid repetition with the Jewish nameset.

Sources that I used include:

• Najpopularniejsze nazwiska w Polsce
  

The city where I grew up, Warren, Michigan, is (or was) so Polish that I knew people with most of those top ranked last names behind that link, and several down the list as well. Going to a Catholic school helped. Going down the list brought back a lot of memories of kids I hadn't thought of in 40 or more years.

[joefromchicago]

CANADIAN NAMES (nameset 32)

Doing research on this nameset proved surprisingly difficult, Unlike the US census, the Canadian census does not publish a list of the most popular first or last names. I assume that has something to do with the complicated language politics in Canada. As a result, lists of the most common Canadian names that can be found online apparently are drawn from surveys of phone books. Those are limited and not very satisfactory. Consequently, I used the name data for the 1901 census (the 1911 census data are available also, but they haven't been posted online yet). Granted, that's not very satisfactory either, but presumably name frequencies haven't changed drastically since then.

Some notes on usage: these are predominantly English last names. Common Scottish and Irish names are included, but this nameset is intended to be used in conjunction with my Irish (18) and Scottish (16) namesets. Likewise, German, Italian, Polish, Chinese, and other non-British names have been deleted - if you want to add other ethnic groups, change the ethnicities settings for Canada in the in-game editor or in the world_default.xml file (a breakdown of Canadian ethnic origins can be found here). The only non-British names that I consciously retained (or added) are Ukrainian, since there's a large Ukrainian population in Canada and there aren't any Ukrainian namesets. Some French last names are included (or retained) to reflect French-Canadians who have been "Anglicized."

I have not been able to find reliable data for first names, so I simply adapted my Anglo-American (20) first names file. Like all the other first names files here, I would consider this nameset appropriate for the era prior to the 1960s. After that, I suggest using the OOTP nameset.

As with the other namesets here, you install them by copying-and-pasting the contents of the attachments over the appropriate set of names in the first_names or names files in the game's database folder. To make the names appear in current games, you'll need to re-import the names in the global setup page.

There are 5473 names in the last names file. There are 1960 in the OOTP file.

32 Canadian first names.txt

32 Canadian Names.txt

[Caporegime]

Great stuff, Joe. I just wanted to thank you for all your hard work.

[chucksabr]

Joe, will you be zipping together all the ethnic files you are working on and making it available as a single download?

[chucksabr]

On the Canadian namesets, I'm a little unclear as to why you bowdlerized English surnames from the French list, since French first name/English last name is fairly common in Quebec, as you can see in this example:

Généalogie du Québec et française d'Amérique: Famille Smith

This doesn't seem to square with the decision to maintain people who have English first names and French last names in the English list.

Am I missing, or misunderstanding, something here?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

Joe, will you be zipping together all the ethnic files you are working on and making it available as a single download?

If someone could explain how to do that, I'd be willing

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

On the Canadian namesets, I'm a little unclear as to why you bowdlerized English surnames from the French list, since French first name/English last name is fairly common in Quebec, as you can see in this example:

Généalogie du Québec et française d'Amérique: Famille Smith

This doesn't seem to square with the decision to maintain people who have English first names and French last names in the English list.

Am I missing, or misunderstanding, something here?

I'm not familiar with lots of French-Canadians who have English last names and French first names, but I'm aware of a fair number of Anglo-Canadians with French last names and British first names. The sources I looked at didn't match first names with last names, so I had no way of knowing how many Smiths were named Allen and how many were named Alain. Unfortunately, that's the way it goes -- the limited nature of the sources meant that a lot of guesswork went into these namesets. Maybe when I revise the French-Canadian nameset, I'll stick in a few English last names.

[darkcloud4579]

Just stumbled into this thread and appreciate all your work.