Fun with Markov chains and Book of Mormon names
So a guy posted on Reddit yesterday about the Markov text generator that he wrote to generate pseudo-Greek names. If you don’t know what a Markov chain is, Wikipedia explains that “Markov processes can also be used to generate superficially ‘real-looking’ text given a sample document”. In his case, he put in all of the names of characters from Homer’s Iliad to create new, similar words automatically.
My first thought was to plug in Book of Mormon names. I noticed that the guy had already done Bible Names (along with Prescription Drugs and Rock Bands), but I wanted pseudo-Book of Mormon names. What if you wanted to name a baby something distinctly “Mormon”, but thought that “Nephi” and “Moroni” — and even “Aminadab” — were too popular already?
I found this list of BoM names on Wikipedia and took out all the repeats and the explanations, and plugged it into the generator as a source text to create this : Word-o-Matic – Book of Mormon names.
It spits out stuff like “Helakish”, “Koriancumer” and “Zerahemish”. Try it out to see if it creates your next baby name.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
My favorite of the ones I saw was Jeredek
November 3rd, 2009 at 6:00 am
It would be really funny to name your baby after a made up BOM character! You could pretend like you it was some obscure person who did something profound. It would be funny to see who pretended to know who you were talking about.