Do your families have a "theme"? To keep my Sims from having all the same-sounding names, I like giving the family a "theme." I look at the parents and base a theme on their names, their personality, their characters. For Example: Charlene Hicks is a TV addict. She names her children after TV characters. Jackson for "Action Jackson", Bambi Jane for, well, "Bambi", Lukas Lorenzo and Laura Anne after characters on a soap opera, "General Hospital." Jack and Rose Dawson: Yeah, I know, big Titanic Buff I am, I thought I'd make a Titanic-themed family. So their sons are Edward (Captain Edward J. Smith), Thomas (Thomas Andrews, ship's archetict), and Benjamin (Benjamin Guggenhiem, the guy who said, "We are dressed in our best, and prepared to go down as gentlemen.") Next for the family, Molly (The unsinkable Molly Brown), Isadora (Isadora Strauss, who refused to leave her husband). Yokel: Mavis and Cledus gave their kids family names from the West Virginia branch of their family tree. So their children are Billy Jack, Peggy Sue, Penny Lou, and Darla Jane My 1st born child in the neighborhood was Virginia Dawn, named after Virginia Dare, the 1st recorded child born to European Settlers in the "New World". And my ailien boy is named Anikan. Okay, so share. Anyone else do that? Or am I just weird? LOL
I mostly go by what sounds good with the last name, but I have themes kind of accidentally. Lola and Tyson named their daughters after places: Zaire and London. Zaire was going to name her kids all X names but I changed my mind. Nova is a hard name to match a good first name to, but so far she and Castor have had Xander and Ariel. In my old neighborhood I did the alphabetical thing, throughout the neighborhood, unless an out-of sequence name really appealed. Got all the way to Z and started over, but only had the A baby before I scrapped the neighborhood because it had too many people. Just because people are always asking for cool names, here's the list: Atalanta, Bennet, Cameron, Diandra, Ella, Felice, Gabrielle, Henry, Isabella, Jackson, Kali, Lily, Madeleine, Nick, Olivia, Parker, Quinn, Riley, Skylar, Tristan, Umani, Vanessa, Xayide, Yvonne, Zoe, and Austen. Also Cadence, Hadley, and Arizona. I like unisex names. Parker, Quinn, Hadley and Skylar were girls. Atalanta, the first sim born in my game, ever, had ten of these kids. She got old before her mom did. Wonder why.
I play in Veronaville so the theme was already set for me! To keep it going, each family gets names from the Shakespeare play that they are already named for. If I run out of names in a play, I move to another play for that family. Some families that I created myself are all names from Greek mythology. And some families that are made of former townies or students, I just choose names that seem to fit with the parent's names. I've only had 1 alien baby and I named her Celestina.
Neighborhood themes In Veronaville, I made two fairy-tale families: Slumberbelle, based on Sleeping Beauty (I had I wierd dream, and got the idea to do that, I'm probably just wierd.) I have Auora, Maleificent (spelled correctly in my game), who is green with "shocked" hair. I made two sisters, Jezabelle and Theresa, who are based on the fairies. Lakeshore, based on Swan Lake (my little sister watches the Barbie version, and asked me to do this). I have Oddette and Odile, twins, Marie, and "Rothbart". He is in love with Malificent. One day I will make a story where Odille (a romance sim) dresses up as Oddette and steals Oddettte's boyfriend, Keith Cormier. They are both kind of wierd and dorky, but they were a lot of fun to make. I have yet to download skins, but can't wait to do so when I get a faster internet connection.(I still have dial-up) I am interested to know what other people's themes are. Please continue to write in this thread!
Oh LOL. I don't do themes ... well not as devotedly as some of you. On the other hand I don't keep records either so I am often a bit lost in my sim neighborhoods That said my CAS sims often suggest a sort of theme; my 'hoods are bit multi-cultural so I might start out with a Kolfi or a Lao or Dilip but once they start interbreeding I tend to choose names to suit a period. Thus one generation would be Alberts and Sarahs another Samuels and Ruths followed by a generation of Darrens and Tracies ... once I run off the time scale I resort names from Sci-Fi like Teela, Trillian, Parolyn and Deety for girls and Hari, Leto, Peersa, Corbell for boys. Yeah, I know ... I'm just weirder than a bushel of fish.
I just pick whatever name pops into my mind. Occasionally a name hits me that's really good and I wait for the next baby to name it, like right now I'm keeping Cassandra and Gwendolyn in my mind. Aren't those names awesome?
My families themselves don't have themes. I just have themed neighborhoods. Like my Egyptian neighborhood had all Egyptian place names and mythology names for their streets, as well as names like Anubis for their last names. My current neighborhood is pretty white bread: Cemetery (named after a family I had in my Egyptian neighborhood), Harmon, Winston, Thackery, Fairchild, Richards and Newman. But then I tend to have rather homogenous neighborhoods. I only have Knowledge Sims, for instance. And the all pretty much have "Pisces" as their "sign." If they don't, I use Merola's multipainting to make the stats which are closest to Pisces even if they started off with something else. (I have enough diversity in real life. I want it a little smoother in my game.)
Those are good names. I especially like Gwendolyn. I'd probably like Cassandra better if there hadn't been one in the Goth family in TS1. I keep lists of names for girls, boys and last names that I've found in baby books, novels, heraldry books, phone books or just ones I've heard and liked. Then when I want a name, I go to the list and pick. That way I don't get repeats accidently. But I think youall have already noticed my "detail oriented" nature. I'm just never as pleased if I go with the spontaneous method. Good thing there's room for all types!
I actually got Gwendolyn from my French teacher--she always brings out a big toy...anteater type creature dressed in a witch's costume during Halloween, and she said its name was Gwendolyn...isn't it weird how our lives revolve around TS2 now? I hear a cool name and I think, 'Wow, I should use that in TS2,' or when we see someone with particularly interesting yet at the same time attractive in a weird way features, we think, 'Gosh, I wish I could make a sim like that!' I usually use babynames.com for most of my sims--for example, when I made a very beautiful Romance sim a couple of months ago, I named her Calista, who was a beautiful (repeat: beautiful) nymph in Greek mythology that rejected Apollo, the sun god, and his twin sister Artemis turned her and her son into bears as punishment, but took pity on her (or some other god did--it's all very sketchy because all the myths are said differently in different books). At least, I think that's how it goes. I'm a big fan(-atic, rather, as my friends say) of Greek mythology and read about it a lot when I was younger. No Disney for me! Wait a second...wasn't I talking about babynames.com? Well, I guess I didn't need the website for that particular sim, but you just search for whatever you want your sim to be--beautiful, blonde, whatever--and pick a name that comes up. Oh yeah, I forgot that Cassandra is the shallow nerd that wants to be in love with Don Lothario but really loves Darren Dreamer.
I mainly named the people in my custom neighborhood after characters from games I've played or anime I've seen. So I have people named after characters from the Final Fantasy series, the Metal Gear Solid series, Kingdom Hearts, Fullmetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, and others. Funny thing is, the majority of the people in my neighborhood do not necessarily look like the characters their named after unless I specifically made them in CAS. For example, Cloud does not look like a hippy/Jesus figure in Final Fantasy VII, but his Sim version does...
I'll usually start with one sim and name him/her using a silly pun of what I am creating them for, example: Ghost Hunter, who is a knowledge sim. Then for their progeny I will either make a punnish theme from the Patriarch's last name (Ghost's sons Rock, Hause and grandson Bug), or first name (Cherry Straight's daughter Peach). Or just for grins-n-giggles I might throw in a little illiteration (some of the Hiatt children... Hiawatha, Herbert, Hernando, Howard). Quite often, when either my wife or I are playing one of us will yell out "Boy/girl name...<last name>" and poll the room. Of course, that's how one of my sims ended up with the moniker "Rowr Pfitt". A couple of our cats where having a dissagrement at the time...
LMAO! ... which reminds that in the Sims 1 one child was named "Whatonearthwerewethinkingof" ... but aw! He was such a little cutie.
... which reminds that in the Sims 1 one child was named "Whatonearthwerewethinkingof" way too funny for 6am. I down loaded that family creator that put first and last names together.... however I can't figure out how to import them into the game other than pen and paper....sigh I can't believe how lazy I'm getting.
Lol, all this is cracking me up pretty early. I just keep a baby names book next to my laptop. When a baby is born I switch to either the girl or boy section, flip the pages, and then pick a name on the page it fell on. I'm not very good to sticking to that rule though since sometimes I don't like any of the names on those pages. Last name I tend to do the same, I pick a letter of the alphabet, then scan through the book for something that could work well as a last name, sometimes I modify the names a bit however for my own liking.
I also have sim families based on word plays/puns. For example, I made the Jaquet family. The first sim was named a normal name, Angelina. For her mother, I picked "Jaune". It mean "yellow" in French.(I think.) Get it?..Yellow Jacket? . She is the victim of a ill-fated attempt to save money by not hiring a repaiman. Next time, I'll make her do some studying first. I had her marry "Strait." I'm not sure what to name their baby. "Squall" doesn't sound like a name, except for a L.L.Bean product. Pretty cheesy, but good considering I thought of them at like, 2am. Has anyone tried that downloadable name generator?
Ok, it sounds weird but here I go. For me i create the appearance of my sim before I chose the name. I do this because i can make then actully suit there name. Off topic:i havnt got NL or UNI but im getting them
I don't think it sounds weird; I do it too! Though sometimes I make a sim that suits a name I've already picked.
There actually seems to be several name generators, and I have even found a neighborhood name generator. Here is a link to the most popular (has both name and neighborhood name generators: http://www.simprograms.com/programs.jsp (scroll down a bit) I like picking my own names, but it does sometimes help. P.S. I don't have NL or Uni, either (and i'm also getting them soon!)
