Well with the site rewritten, the numbers back, a new year starting, and some time off I decided to write a brand new, in-depth generator to finally solidify the mojo that’s come back. So I chose something that seemed both easy and popular, the Magical Legend Pony Namer, which seemed simple and fun, and of course played into the most unexpected fandom ever to dominate the internet and the insanely long-lived collector enthusiasm.
Actually it works pretty well, but what was stunning – and indeed obsession-making – is it taught me about language patterns I’d missed. This is actually going to help out in future generators. Without boring you (because I could go on) here’s what I learned, mostly thanks to the incredibly extensive online resources I found.
Lesson One. There’s a continuity between descriptive terms and objects – but it’s not that some objects can also define things (like the word “silver”) but objects at times define objects (the words “Pasta Salad” have an object defining another object). So there’s a little more complexity than I realized here, and I think future (and revised) generators will be better for noticing this.
Lesson Two. Names have a level of formality about the – or a lack. The level of formality affects how you associate names, words, titles, and concepts and the difference between a formal name and a nickname. This is reasonably easy to classify, actually.
So I learned something. I just didn’t expect to. I’ll now leave you to the names.
– Steven Savage
