Jozef’s Authentic Germanic Names Pack
- Replaces Germanic first names with a much larger list of authentic-sounding ones
- Replaces Latinised last names with patronyms of all added male first names
As can be read here[en.wikipedia.org], Germanic names in this time were generally composed of two words joined together (eg. William/Wilhelm, "will" as in desire and "helm" meaning protection).
To make names that are more authentic (sounding, anyway; don’t take this to be in any way scientific), I used Wikipedia and Wiktionary to find (possible) etymologies of prefixes and suffixes of the names used in the game. I looked up their reconstructed form, categorised them according to stem and inflected them accordingly.
For example, the (translated) name "Raven" has a masculine a stem, so in the nominative case it’s "*hrabnaz" and in the genitive case "*hrabnas". The word for "sun" has an ōn stem: in the nominative, it’s "*sunnǭ" and in the genitive "*sunnōniz". The name "Raven’s son" then becomes "*hrabnassunuz" and "Sun’s daughter" is "*sunnōnizduhter". For more information about the stems in Proto-Germanic and their inflections, look here[en.wikipedia.org].
This way I made two lists with reconstructed words, ordered according to stem: one with the prefixes and one with the suffixes. I then made and used an Excel sheet to easily combine them all with proper inflection, and from the results I deleted some that sounded off.
The Germanic peoples didn’t really use last names, so giving them last names is in itself unrealistic. It is nevertheless understandable that all characters require last names in a game in which families are of importance. I still think it feels nicer, more authentic, when both the first and the last name of Germanic characters in this game sound Germanic.
Instead of Latinised last names (so "Rigleikes" or "Rigleikid") this mod uses patronyms. In a metaphorical sense, I’m treating the clan name as the name of the "father" of all clan members: the members of the "Rikalaikaz" clan get either "Rikalaikassunuz" (Rikalaikaz’ son) or "Rikalaikasduhter" as last name. I essentially took a male name, the Proto-Germanic word for "son" and "daughter" and inflected the name for the genitive case.
