Say my name

[Uberskaapie]

I would like for there to be a way for one character to say his/her name and have everyone see the same word come up on their screen whether they understand that person's spoken language or not.

Something like:

I type - say (prodding his chest with a forefinger) &n

you see - prodding his chest with a forefinger, the figure in a baby blue hooded bathrobe says, in an unfamiliar language, "Uberskaapie"

because it sucks to try and learn peoples names when they are always mispronouncing them. That is all.

[Tisiphone]

I like this idea as well, because your name should not be affected by the language you speak. Generally.

[Marauder Moe]

Totally a good idea.

Better implementation might be to make a command called "name <your name>", and have it only succeed if <your name> is one of your keywords (and preferably have name/aliases be seperate from sdesc keywords).

Only problem is names that are actual words, but I suppose we'd just tell people not to use that command if that's the case.

[Xio]

I actually agree with this, seeing as your name sounds the same in every language, save the funny accents people have that contort your name.

Though seeing as some people don't go by their full name all the time for whatever reason, I think you should be able to change your &n name when you first create a char if you want to, and/or via mail. Personally don't think its something you should wish up about unless when you created the char you made a typo you didn't notice and the staff thought was on purpose Rock instead of Lock for instance.

[Tisiphone]

Only problem is names that are actual words.

I thought about this too, but while in sirihish, "Amos," might mean, "rock-mover," (in the same way that John Cooper means something in English, if you stop to think about it), the fact remains that it still sounds like, "Amos," to that elf over there, and the playerbase doesn't normally stop to think what it means in its native language (there are, of course, exceptions).

[Marauder Moe]

Yeah but "cooper" is an english word.

There's a potential ambiguity when introducing yourself to someone in Arm who doesn't speak your language.  If a sirihish speaker did ">name Sunshine" to an elf.  The name would, in reality, be the sirihish word for sunshine, but if the elf goes talking to all his friends about this person he'll be using the allundean word for it.  This would also cause some discrepency if a more predictable language scrambler (like the one I suggested in a thread of mine a while back) were implemented.

Both are very minor problems, and not ones that I'd say would be a good reason not to have a command like this in place, but still something worth considering.

[Xio]

Totally a good idea.

Better implementation might be to make a command called "name <your name>", and have it only succeed if <your name> is one of your keywords (and preferably have name/aliases be seperate from sdesc keywords).

Only problem is names that are actual words, but I suppose we'd just tell people not to use that command if that's the case.

The only reason I wouldn't want that because of the potential for abuse

and the thing with sunshine. If you told irl your name as Sunshine in french lets say, you would still use the word -Sunshine-. That's the difference.

[Uberskaapie]

If a french person told me their name was Soleil, I might think it's a bit odd, but I certainly wouldn't introduce them to my friends as "Sun" Their name is Soleil. The way I was thinking about it, it would only work for the name given during character creation, but I can see your point.

[Lizzie]

The only problem would be if it was a different species. Like mantis. If a mantis says, "We are the Borg"

a human or elf or dwarf might hear:

The mantis says, in mantis-talk, "Xy yxx xy Xyxx."

The human hears "Xyxx" and wouldn't be able to pronounce it since (if I understand the docs right) the mantises are a species of insect. They also wouldn't know the mantis is telling them their name; they could think the bug is saying, "We kill you now."

[Mood]

I like this. Another thing I would like to see is the possibility to teach individual words (and/or phrases) to a non-speaker of a language. It might take some time (and practice for the one who is trying to learn), but it should be much easier than learning a new language. Simple things like "Hello", "Goodbye", "Good day", and "Oh my sweet krath, did you see the size of that?"

[Marauder Moe]

Another thing I would like to see is the possibility to teach individual words (and/or phrases) to a non-speaker of a language.

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23867  

[bilic]

I realy hope that goes in.

[nyrk]

Actualy, what I think would be interesting is this:
your character name is your Truename.  usefull for things such as long distance curses, mindbending, etc, basically anything where you need access to the "soul" of the person, perhaps even some healing or blessing spells to balance it out, so you would share it with only people you trust, and generally guard it as a secret.

Say my player name is Amos (of course) amos would not be a keyword that would work unless the player trying to address me had specifically remembered my as "Amos"

physical keywords would all still work, but the player would not set keywords for themselves. Each player would remember the name for the people they met:

The tall dark man is standing here

keywords are "tall" and "dark"

The tall dark man says "My name is Elmer"

I could type type something like
remember tall elmer

then elmer would work as a keyword for me

Amos, aka elmer, could then introduce himself as "Hanz" to someone else without having to add a keyword to himself.

[Xio]

I like this idea mainly for the remember thing so you don't have to have a load of keywords etc, but the way I perceive things you can mindbend someone without knowing their name, maybe even wrack their brain to find their name. Basically the same for healing spells etc.