Name Generator for .NET

Question

Has anyone written, or know of a library, that generates fairly accurate looking Western European style names? i.e. John, Susan, Smith, Julien, April, etc., etc...

Answer 1

If you are targeting a database, the RedGate Data Generator is a good option.

Visual Studio Database Edition also has similar functionality.

Answer 2

why not just grab a list of names and choose one randomly from the list? I'm doubtful that there'd be a particular way to 'generate' realistic names.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

You could try using this list to produce a Markov Chain, which might yield some useful results.

Answer 3

Jon Galloway wrote a post on his blog about name generation - Generate random fake surnames

Answer 4

Not sure if this will work but check FakeNameGenerator it will generate names and some information as well. One at a time or in batch.

Answer 5

I just grab the US Census names list and select from there randomly. The male list is only 41k -- not too big, especially when compressed a bit.

Answer 6

The only name-generator I know of used statistical analysis to analyse names, and created new ones based on that. It wasn't exactly a 'library', but it had sample C++ code, along with the algorithm, which would probably only take an hour or two to implement; or you could compile it as C++/CLI. The samples on the page was using an arbitrary text, but if you used a bunch of names, then I'm pretty sure that it would go well.

Answer 7

I created a .net random name generating library (dll) that uses the data from the lists mentioned by HanClinto (ie the US Census names list). It allows you to generate first and last names or only first or last names. Also you can generate specifically male or female names or let it randomly determine the sex of the first name.

You can try it out or download it at this blog post.