Alien Names in Python

Purpose and Construction of Alien Names

This web application produces alien names for science fiction writers, fantasy role playing gamers, or just for fun. They also make great insults! This is a preview of the work in progress. Feel free to bookmark this page and watch the application develop. ... Alien Names are constructed randomly by the code embedded in this page (using Python) according to various linguistic rules employing consonants and vowels. Usually the resulting names are pronouncable. This technique is also useful in generating passwords.

History

I first published versions of this technique in RECREATIONAL COMPUTING in 1980 and in onCOMPUTING magazine later that same year. The program was also mentioned in the February 1980 Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine (look in the Classifieds). In 1985 I released a compiled BASIC program also called ALIEN NAMES as shareware. For the past 20 years or so, I've gotten the occasional check, some from places like South Africa, Germany, and other countries. In 1999, I wrote ALIEN NAMES yet again using the powerful REBOL scripting language. (rebol.com, "It's Perl without the complication.") I also wrote a book about REBOL for the Dummies series, REBOL FOR DUMMIES.

Time marches on. As I discover new scripting languages, ALIEN NAMES often gets coded first just to see the language's flexibility. I learn by playing ;-). Some implementations require effort, others do not. REBOL was easy (see here). Doing it in HTML/OS was incredibly fast and simple (see here), one fastest ways to develop web aps I've found to date! I have a PHP version here. And this version of my ALIEN NAMES app was done using Python with Apache, Spyce, and Mod_Python to get .spy pages (and a straight Mod_Python/PSP version here).