I had a ponder: Naming your empire and you.

[madpraxis (OP)]

Also known as obsessive compulsive and/or anal retentive joys. So I'm sitting there cracking out with a random big book full of history (because I remember SOME of this stuff, but not most) from the downstairs bookcase when I went a pondering.....'Hrm' I say to myself 'I can't be the only one that has these sudden urges to organize my empire in a somewhat coherent manner in a desire to fulfill my anal reten..er...make it look neat, ya..that's it'.
So, how I am doing it this game.
Real stars off, rolled up a nebula system. Made up a few sentence back story to fulfill my baser urges 'What if aliens stole away some Romans back in around 400 AD somewhere abouts. And then lived with them on their planet until 'they' came along, where upon they ran into the nebula to hide, taking their little buddies with them. But then they all died...call it a latent bioweapon of 'them' that finally got them...leaving the poor descendants of the Romans all alone on this planet amongst the ruins of their friends'.
Ok, back story in to satisfy my baser urges. Now....hrm...how to name things..Quick! To the downstairs bookcase of history! Where upon we dig up information about the later roman empire. Now, I love this stuff...but...I want a quick and dirty map...not hundreds of pages of text that I need to read through, albeit I enjoy it. Hrm...WIKI. Gotcha wiki.
To the naming! Roman themed, but I OVERWRITE YOU DEFAULT NAMES! BWA HA HA. Well, we see that Tuscia et Umbria was the province containing Roma (city, not the province). But that just won't do. Our home system is now Italia (Yes, not a province, but a region. This will be the one exception to the rule that will be layed down). So, now, other then the home system each system will be named after a 400 AD province. Which also gives me province capitals and major cities to use as planet names! Hurra! Not only that but if by some wonder I don't wander off and start a new game, I also now have sector names, thanks to the region names! Now, this may require some picky choices (like...Corsica...one major city..and thats it, so no good for a system with two inhabitable planets). So as an example in the home system of Italia, in the Italia sector, we have the homeworld: Roma, and the two inhabitable (soon) planets: Florentia (First one worked on, so its bigger) and Arretium. And yes, around this time Roma wasn't really the 'capital' but dammnit, its the thought that matters. The 2 sectors it has jump points too are Liguria, with its 1 inhabitable body (soon) Mediolanum, and Venetia with its two inhabitable (soon) bodies, Aquileia and Patavium. Both systems part of the Italia sector.
So now the system, sector, and inhabitable planets are done with idea wise. Onto the mining bodies. Well, this one is easier. I mean, its a hole in the ground. It's only purpose is to provide material wealth for the holy roman empire. As such, such measly locations do not deserve to be blessed with true names. Instead I go back in time to school...and the NATO phonetic alphabet. Because, hey, we still USE the latin aka roman alphabet, descended from the greek alphabet. With extra letters. So ok, mines get named in order of founding and by system name. So, in Italia we have Italia Alfa, Italia Bravo, Italia Charlie, and so on. This just makes it easier for us to differentiate now between important events on important planets (read: inhabitable ones) and things we sort of care about (Ya, I'm talking about you Italia Tango).
Right, mining operations out of the way. But wait we cry! What about GAS GIANTS with SORIUM! We shall not forget our friendly giants in the sky...wait...friendly...sky...Gods...thats it. Gas giants get named after Greco-Roman gods! Capital idea, after all, are they not responsible for giving us the fuel we need to conquer the world!...er...galaxy! Plus, seriously, the giggles you can get from the comment of 'I went and refueled at Bacchus today' are just totally worth it.
So, locations out of the way...what about alien intelligences we encounter? Easy Peasy I say. After all, there is over a thousand years of history to pick and choose enemies and client states from. We will start early, with the last king of rome, just because his name is SUPERBUS. So the first 'friendly' aliens we 'help' shall be called the Rutulians...in honour of the last kings last military campaign before that snotty upstart Lucius Junius Brutus booted our dear friend Superbus out the door, presumably minus important bits, like his head (Though I digress here, who the hell knows what happened...roman history is so packed with made up crap its rather pointless to try and figure it out).
So, that is what and how I go about the  naming of my current game. Last couple of games back many moons ago it was countries from Magnamund (Thanks Magnamund Companion!).
So...discuss...Explain your urges, your desires. Your wants and your needs...at least naming wise in Aurora that is...
And as an aside, just for fun I ran the spellchecker...hehe..some of the things it came up with where hilarious. Also, as an aside for people who know history, yes, I did lump Italia Annonaria and Italia Suburbicaria into just plain old Italia. I may change that around later and split them up properly depending on how long I actually keep at this current game.

[xeryon]

Mine is slightly less complex but probably more disturbing.

My last game was named according to rooms of my house.  Primary system was Living Room.  Major inhabited bodies were Lazy-Boy, Sofa and Davenport.  Minor bodies were End Table, Ottoman and Book Shelf, next system was Dining Room, Bedroom and Kitchen and so on.  All of the ships in the game were class named as my pets names and the individual ships were named as body parts of the animal in question.  Major administrators and commanders were renamed as family member names.

I deleted that game.  While it was funny for a while I got a disturbing mental image when my Mother in Law was stationed on the Throne in the Front Bathroom system and Sparky's Penis kept having problems unloading cargo.

[madpraxis (OP)]

....You sir, are now full of win after that. WIN I say. If you where female I would ask to be the one to host your larvae so my genetics could be part of it, you know, after they hatch and eat my carcass...oh wait, sorry...I have to remember that all females are NOT horrific demon spawned hell hornets like my ex, my bad.
But still, WIN. If I had the money, I'd send you a twinkie with a little gold star on the wrapping as a trophy.   

[Erik L]

Mine is slightly less complex but probably more disturbing.

My last game was named according to rooms of my house.  Primary system was Living Room.  Major inhabited bodies were Lazy-Boy, Sofa and Davenport.  Minor bodies were End Table, Ottoman and Book Shelf, next system was Dining Room, Bedroom and Kitchen and so on.  All of the ships in the game were class named as my pets names and the individual ships were named as body parts of the animal in question.  Major administrators and commanders were renamed as family member names.

I deleted that game.  While it was funny for a while I got a disturbing mental image when my Mother in Law was stationed on the Throne in the Front Bathroom system and Sparky's Penis kept having problems unloading cargo.

I should turn on karma just because of this post...

[schroeam]

Mine is slightly less complex but probably more disturbing.

My last game was named according to rooms of my house.  Primary system was Living Room.  Major inhabited bodies were Lazy-Boy, Sofa and Davenport.  Minor bodies were End Table, Ottoman and Book Shelf, next system was Dining Room, Bedroom and Kitchen and so on.  All of the ships in the game were class named as my pets names and the individual ships were named as body parts of the animal in question.  Major administrators and commanders were renamed as family member names.

I deleted that game.  While it was funny for a while I got a disturbing mental image when my Mother in Law was stationed on the Throne in the Front Bathroom system and Sparky's Penis kept having problems unloading cargo.

Deleted is probably best, but the fiction from that campaign would be an incredibly funny read!

[Five]

LMAO!!

[Owen Quillion]

That little story was mildly amusing until it got very disturbing. And, truthfully, very amusing. xeryon now has the dubious honor of being one of the few folks on the Internet who's made me choke on my morning drink.

I've never got an empire large enough to have a dire need for names, and I'm a big nerd anyway, so I'm happy to use Real Stars and use Wikipedia to steal other people's names. It's not terribly creative and you run the risk of a given star having only cruddy names (or none!), but it works for me.

[xeryon]

I downloaded a compendium of names for the WOT series but making a WOT theme is a daunting task for me time-wise.  The area were the WOT theme breaks down a bit is system names.  For a scripted sequence of system names you would run out of of them very quickly as the number of region/country names is rather limited.  It would require me to manually rename non-relevant systems to generic names.  I suppose I could just use major city names for systems but as a huge fan of the WOT series it would aggravate my OCD to have cities within a country be named as an entire system when the parent country has it's own system named after it elsewhere.

I wonder if it would be possible for Steve to create an entirely generic theme as a base for people that want to individually name everything?  Systems generate on sequential Roman numerals.  Staff and admins are all named Robert Paulson.  It would make it easier to figure out who you need to correct the naming for.  I suppose that would be easy enough to do myself...

[madpraxis (OP)]

Bugger it, just name them all Bob...all of them...the academy graduates, the ships, the sectors, the planets...everything...Bob.

[Panopticon]

It's Bobs all the way down.

Xeryon: That is the best naming scheme I have ever heard, I think I might have to adopt it for one of my own games.

[Zed 6]

Emperpor:  " Administrator Bob. For all your hard work and loyalty, I hereby assign you to the Toilet System.  Your ship, the Rusty Sink is waiting for you and departs immediately"

[xeryon]

Emperpor:  " Administrator Bob. For all your hard work and loyalty, I hereby assign you to the Toilet System on the planet Rusty Sink.  Your ship, the Fluffy Anus is waiting for you and departs immediately"

Fixed

[schroeam]

ROFLMAO!!!!

[Garfunkel]

If I play the Terran Federation, I use real country names for systems in a somewhat Europe-centric, arbitrary way. Unless there is a specific reason to name them for something special - like in one game Sol only had 3 JPs, two being short dead ends. So the last one that actually led out the wider galaxy was renamed Gate and the only colonizable planet was named Gateway.

[madpraxis (OP)]

...I would kill for a system like that...seriously...my games for some reason (on the default settings) ALWAYS seem to tend towards 4-6 JP's a system...none of them dead ends...most of them leading to systems with yet again 4-6 JP's and no dead ends...I see some of the maps of other's games and it usually makes me sad that I can't do things like that due to insane amounts of jump points...