CityNameManager+ Release

Oh I didn't know that was possible. Can it be done to the two Qart Hadashts too? It's always bothered me that they're differentiated with a hyphen, it's gimmicky.

Sure. The example only takes the regionID of the city, but you can use any attribute of the city object. If you want, you could even limit it to a single tile by using city.getX() and city.getY().
 
Hi! I took the time to look at your work and I wanted to say, as a city names enthusiast, that I am very impressed. Some of the things in here were ideas that I've thought would be neat for a long time, like having independent names for cities like Helsinki or Prague, though you've pushed it far beyond anything I would have envisioned.

I really enjoyed the screenshot albums and will read any others you post. Based on them, I have a few suggestions:
  • While it's kind of a cool easter egg to rename Rome as Civitas Vaticana when independent, I don't think it's really justified. There was never a city called 'Vatican', despite the phrase "Vatican City" being used to refer to the independent state — which in any case isn't much more than a small neighborhood of the city of Rome. Also, if I understand this right, the name wasn't used before 1929 (except to refer to the hill), so it would be bizarre to see it pop up in the Ancient or Medieval eras. An independent Rome in the Middle Ages or Renaissance would clearly represent the Papal States, and the Papal States' capital was unambiguously called Rome.
  • I think there should be no accent on the 'a' of Tenochtitlan. In Spanish it often has one, but in Nahuatl the stress is on the 'i', and (for instance) Nahuatl Wikipedia spells it without an accent. The same holds for Teotihuacan and Tlaxcallan, by the way. Not sure about other cities with the suffix -an. It's not always easy to find original Nahuatl names, and Spanish has influenced the language quite a bit.
  • I think it makes sense that Kaminaljuyu becomes Guatemala, but both cities should be further west, in the Guatemala highlands. They could share their tile with Q'umarkaj, which flourished later than Kaminalkuyu. Not sure what should go on the current Kaminaljuyu tile, though, so it's probably fine like this. In general, there are lots of potential renames over time in the area, since the history of the Maya is the history of city-states rising and falling, so it might be worth diving deep if you haven't already.
  • About Coimbra, Nigeria: you have Calabar on that tile for the English, and this page states that the name 'Calabar' was given to the city of Akwa Akpa by a Portuguese explorer. Sounds like an obvious solution to me!
  • I'm wondering if Canada should get its own language. I remember being responsible for giving them the "American" language (instead of English) so they could use French names in French-speaking areas. But maybe it would be better to make that distinct from what the Americans use, so the latter could keep e.g. using English names in Quebec. (Although, you could imagine an alternate history where the 13 colonies ally with the French-speaking Canadiens and give rise to a bilingual union of states...) Maybe there are situations where American and Canadian names would be desirable? I don't know. Probably not super important.
 
The reason for the accent is because the tl actually ends with a glottal stop in nahuatl, this is how the spanish represented that. i don't think we can show a glottal stop in the city names.. so having some representation is better than none.. the name has to be romanised in some form any way.. best it be more accurate than less.

edit: i don't think glottal stop is the right way to describe the pronunciation (although Nahuatl does use them in other circumstances), but more like the l is like an l at the beginning of a word in English, and very short/stopped, as opposed to say English "bottle."
 
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The reason for the accent is because the tl actually ends with a glottal stop in nahuatl, this is how the spanish represented that. i don't think we can show a glottal stop in the city names.. so having some representation is better than none.. the name has to be romanised in some form any way.. best it be more accurate than less.

edit: i don't think glottal stop is the right way to describe the pronunciation (although Nahuatl does use them in other circumstances), but more like the l is like an l at the beginning of a word in English, and very short/stopped, as opposed to say English "bottle."

Aren't glottal stops depicted in English with apostrophes like in Hawai'i?
 
Why not write "Tenōchtitlan", which is the nahuatl spelling in nahuatl wikipedia? If the "ō" can't be depicted, then I don't know (the macron marks a long vowel). Whichever arbitrary convention you all choose is fine, since there is no accepted standard. Perhaps it's easiest if we just nahuatl wikipedia?

In any case, the "án" is a castillianized pronunciation of the original name, it would indicate (in spanish) to emphasize the tlan, while nahuatl pronunciation emphasizes the ti.

Also, Tenochtitlan (in nahuatl) doesn't end with a glottal stop, although you're right that "h" was used to mark a glottal stop. You can see that in the word Mēxihco.
 
The reason for the accent is because the tl actually ends with a glottal stop in nahuatl, this is how the spanish represented that. i don't think we can show a glottal stop in the city names.. so having some representation is better than none.. the name has to be romanised in some form any way.. best it be more accurate than less.

edit: i don't think glottal stop is the right way to describe the pronunciation (although Nahuatl does use them in other circumstances), but more like the l is like an l at the beginning of a word in English, and very short/stopped, as opposed to say English "bottle."

Do you have a source for that? First, in (modern) Spanish, the "l" is already pronounced like at the beginning of an English word, and not like in "bottle". I think the way a (modern) Spanish speaker would pronounce the "tl" would be very close to correct. Second, it would be weird to use a diacritic that already signifies stress (if it did back then) to represent a change in pronunciation of the preceding consonant.
 
The macron diacritic cannot be represented in the game.
 
Do you have a source for that? First, in (modern) Spanish, the "l" is already pronounced like at the beginning of an English word, and not like in "bottle". I think the way a (modern) Spanish speaker would pronounce the "tl" would be very close to correct. Second, it would be weird to use a diacritic that already signifies stress (if it did back then) to represent a change in pronunciation of the preceding consonant.

Thinking about it now I definitely agree the diacritic for the a should be removed, reading again about the nahuatl language on wikipedia I feel as if i've stumbled upon a mandela effect where I couldn't find any of the pertinent info I swear I read some years ago... perhaps disregard my comment entirely.
 
It might actually have been there some time ago, and then later edited out.
 
Speaking of Nahuatl it's really hard to strictly define how things shall be spelled or written. Not only the native scribes of the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain had not adopted a uniform spelling accord we are accustomed to, but also nowadays there are plenty of vernacular ortographies. One are more resembling IPA/English alphabet another is more historical (for instance, the Aztecs in modern nahuatl would be spelled Mexijka or Mexihca, respectively). Macrons were rarely used, as it was intuitive for Nahua which wovels shall be long or short (AFAIK only H. Carochi writes them down in his dictonary. The documents written by native scribes barely do not apply macrons, and if so, rather to mark the following nasal consoant).
Speaking of pronounciation, both nowadays and in colonial times dialects of Nahuatl have existed. However, we can be quite confident that Nahua from colonial Central Mexico have spelled final -tl as [͡tɬ] and not [ʔ] as they have applied the Spanish alphabet morpho-phonetically. Hence, if classical altepetl (community, city-state) was spelled <altepetl> and not <altepej> or <altepeh> we can be pretty sure to stick with "tl" spelling. Moreover, as plural suffix can be a glottal stop [ʔ] or <h>/<j>, it is fairly not probable that the Aztecs form early colonial Central Mexico have spelled final "-tl" as a glottal stop. In vernacular Nahuatl dialects it is possible that they pronouce it this manner as there (yet) exist plethora of Nahuatl varieties.

Actually, as the debate on the shape of standard Nahuatl ortography is really fierce, you could consider applying two different forms for two different Independent States' name maps, so in one map city could have been spelled Xochimilco and Acuicuizcatepec and another Xuchimilko and Akwikwiskatepek.
 
Anything that makes it less Spanish looking is a plus in my book.
 
And that's the issue here. Classical Nahuatl orthogrphy derives directly from Spanish XVI c. alphabet, it's got to resemble it. Hence, if we were to stick to "Americanised" one that's less alike to the Spanish the effect for the pre-colonial and esp. colonial period would be anachronistic and very inaccure. That's the same thing as if we'd opt for Cyrillic script for Western Slavic languages (such as Polish or Czech). It could have ocurred, and it actually did twice, but makes no sense for contemporary culture and language as an institution. However, as the game's to describe 'alternate realities', the latter orthography might be a good variety for Aztec city names if they were conquered by any of Anglo-Saxon countries.
If somebody has any spare time to add flavour - Germans were also aware of the Aztec riches and Albrecht Dürer for sure. There is a possibility that Germans could have rendered the toponyms differently, in the regime of their orthography. If one could attest something like this we could comfortably add Tenotchtitlan, Schotchikalko or even Askapozalko.
 
IPAs are too bitter for me let the hoppy trend die
 
I am working my brain on a response that I am mostly not typing up because it's bound to be large. There is a lot to talk about here and I find it hard to fit all in my head let alone in text. So I guess it's better to start the discussion somewhere and I'll layer on more stuff as we go along.

I think it's most important before I give actual feedback that we have some terminology to talk about this. So let me propose the following (examples from the old CNM):

1. A translation is when a city name is not really changed but only rendered in a different language. For example Venezia/Venice/Venedig etc. are translations of the same city name. This is usually the default case that happens when a city changes owner.
2. A hypername is when distinctly different names are used to refer to the same city. Examples for this are Edo/Tokyo, York/Toronto, Byzantion/Konstantinoupolis, Stalingrad/Volgograd. Each hypername for a city can have distinct translations. Names can change by era, after civic changes, or after city conquest.
3. A relocation is when the name of an existing city is changed to a completely different city that is located on the same tile, even though both cities do not have continuity. This currently happens very rarely, but examples for this are the often discussed Babylon/Baghdad and Carthage/Tunis pairs. Like hypernames, each location has distinct translations. Theoretically, different locations can also have different hypernames but I cannot think of a case where this could actually happen.

Anything wrong here? Another type that isn't covered?

Some early observations based on these distinctions:

1. Current DoC policy has been that relocations are bad and should not happen. A tile can house many different cities but once the city is founded it cannot change anymore. I am not against changing that, but it's worth thinking about what it means for the game.
2. A translation, or generally any name change that happens on city conquest is transparent to the player. You get a new city and learn its name. Hypernames and relocations on the other hand have the potential to be confusing. From one turn to another, one of your cities may suddenly have a different name and you only notice when it pops up in the build queue or in an event notification. This is currently not that much of a problem because relocations do not exist and hypernames are rare enough that it is not too confusing or distracting. If hypernames become more frequent and relocations become possible to occur, we might need to think about ways of addressing this. A good idea here is to limit the possible causes for hypernames to clearly apparent causes to the player to go in hand with other big announcements (era changes, civic changes), I don't know if others exist here currently. It might also be a good idea to add interface announcements when a hypername happens.
3. Relocations should definitely have an announcement, and maybe also have other effects. For example, I could imagine adding a city ruins building that will represent the abandoned previous city on the previous tile. It could enable some interesting events like being used as a quarry, in archeology, as a tourist attraction etc. Just something I started thinking about once this came up.
4. Likewise, relocations should be allowed but rare, and have specific causes. Some screenshots shown here suggest that cities relocate all over the place as time passes (thinking of India here). I think that goes a little far, and would make things too confusing. I'd rather like a system where the city founded on the tile (if it can contain multiple) can have a name chosen from multiple alternatives but then not change easily. A good candidate for that is conquest, or change of hands due to other factors like flips and collapses. This is just talking from my impressions here, I can cite specific examples later which is probably the better way to talk about this.
5. Another thing I noticed is that if a city has multiple hypernames, one hypername may have a translation in a given language but the other hypername may not. In this case it's good if the game would automatically select the translation for the other hypername instead. This could cut down on the accounting for all different names in the programming.
6. In general I want to make hypernames and relocations explicit concepts in the code. I suppose currently they are implemented implicitly through a series of rename conditions. I think that becomes hard to handle at a certain point.

That's quite a lot, let's leave it here for now.
 
I do want there to be lots of hypernames, especially China is a part of the world that feels very ahistorical with its lack of city renaming.

I just want this to be transparent to the player. Maybe it makes sense to apply more aggressive hypername and relocation rules only to the AI and be more conservative when the city is player owned.

Relocation could even be a choice where you can say yes or no to it happening.
 
I think we can make it a BUG option how to present the city renaming notifications, so the players can set their own preference. I can imagine that some would like to have a notification about every little detail, while others don't want to be bothered by this.

I think that the notifications are only needed for hypernames and relocation. Maybe some option only apply to one of them. (Like the option to accept/deny renaming)

I was thinking of the following BUG options:

1. Notification style (select option from dropdown menu)
- None
- Event messenger (the texts just below the tech bar)
- Popup
- Both event messenger and popup
IIRC the event messenger will also store the message in the event log. I could image that some people want to keep track of this during a game.
The message will be something like: "From now on, the city of X will be known as Y"

2. Which cities (select option from dropdown menu)
- Only own cities
- Only known foreign cities
- Both own and known foreign cities

3. Rename accept option (checkbox)
When enabled, the popup will also show 2 buttons for accepting or denying the renaming of the city. (Only your own cities) Otherwise you automatically accept all renaming. (Possibly when enabled it will override the choice of option 1 and will always show the popup)

EDIT:
Maybe the renaming rules (for the human player) can also be made an option.
4. Renaming rules (human player)
- Same as AI (more aggressive)
- More conservative
 
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