BuzzerBeater Forums

I thought the criteria was nationality of the person, not origins of his name.

There is also a French translation by ebobo for the people who speak French, so this alreay is a multilangual thread.

Yeah. A little bit like reading all the subtitles at the end of the movie.

well, no the name should be typical Belgian. anyone can come and live in Belgium, but it doesn't mean his name is Belgian.

the names database is programmed to have a mix of names from diffrent databases, and the developpers have taken info from the internet with the populations of the countries to know how much% of each database they should use for each country. So if we put non-Belgian names in the Belgian database, the mix would not be right anymore, there would be too many foreign names, because they would have x% foreign names from theother databases, and then have an other y% of foreign names from our own databank.
Also other countries might get names that never occur there.

example (which is not what it is in reality, but just to explain):
in blegium we have 80% belgian names and 20% German names.
in Spain there is 5% belgians, but no Germans.

if we would add 20% german names in our databank becasue we have 20% germans in our country, we would end up with:
about 70% belgian and 30% german names, which does not represent what the BBs had in mind.
in Spain German names would apear, while BB never programmed them to be there.

Hope you understand why the Belgian database can ONLY have Belgian names.

In the end, there will be enough foreign names amongst our youth players, and I believe you might already have noticed that.

I'm not realy sure, but I think for Belgium, the amount of names used for youthplayers is about 55% from the Belgian database, so that leaves room for 45% of all others...


Yeah, the translation is somehow lost in the posts, but hat also is because fellow players couldn't resist the urge to spam this thread before it was decently started....
I will add a sentence in the first post, and also add some to the title. The French part might not be good, but there IS a reason I asked someone else to translate it, and that is also why there was no French in my initial post as well. :p
In my early days I didn't think about adding English either, since it was not a Belgian official language...

Last edited by Lord of Doom at 9/18/2012 8:01:20 AM

the developpers took the info from the net to make the mix, so don't worry, the maroccan names will be in the mix as well.

there is indeed no 'fixed' rule to determine what a name origins from, and in some cases it is hard to find out.

we all know for example that 'börg" is not typically Belgian
while 'Jannsens' is.

same for Ilja and Bart...

so in case it is clear the name is from foreign origin, we should NOT add it to the Belgian database to not mess up what the developpers intended to do.

in case of doubt, it's up to the one who is requested to add the name, to decide it is Belgian enough , or it is rather foreign...

Just once posting my own view on this matter:

I think we all agree that the draftees names and playernames in newly created teams should reflect as best as possible the actual situation in Belgium. Question is how can we do this the best way.

- Of course an exact way is to put all 11 million first names and 11 million last names in our database, and update them every year (deceases, immigration, emigration, births). As the lists are updated manualy... I hope you'll understand this would be a huge work, not executable for our LA's. (I even doubt a list with all names of belgian citizens would even be available due to privacy reasons). Extra: we should even concentrate on 18y - 30y olds as this is the group that is created as players.

- Question is how to make this conform the irl situation in Belgium and how to make it workable. I wasn't GM yet and have never been a LA... so I didn't participated in these discussions (I wonder if i was already playing BB). But if I understand it well... it was decided to make lists with typical original 'belgian' names, typical 'arab' names, typical 'spanish' names, and so on... Afterwards some proportionally division for the different countries was made using names out of these different databases. This percentage should imo opinion reflect the actual situation in Belgium.(I'm just giving an example: 80 % Belgian names, 4 % Arab, 1% Greek, 2% Italian,....) The system is used in all countries in BB, were the different databases are used to try to reach the most acurate namegiving in the different countries by using their percentages. By doing this they try - as you're stating it so nice - to embrace the diversity in nations.

Imo the title from this topic could be a bit mischosen, as we have tried, based on this database with names and using some percentages from the different other databases, to come to some typical belgian nomenclature for our players with belgian nationality.The list is imo not aimed to reflect a belgian situation; these lists are only media to create a belgian nomenclature as close as possible to reality. I'm sure the list isn't perfect and every suggestion is welcome, as are internet lists and data which could be usefull.

That's an interesting thread
In France, our name database is composed by names from immigration. And that's closer to reality.
In my mind: if the BB want something typically and only belgian/french, would they have put black faces in the belgian/french databases? I don't think so. I think they want the db to represent the belgium in its reality. That's why we find all the faces in our databases and we should find all the names of our countries in our databases.
Otherwise, all the black faces will have typically and original french/belgian names? not realistic.

In France, our name database is composed by names from immigration

Just some clarification...
- are these immigration data used to update/add the names?
- are these immigration data used to determine the percentage used from different databases?

In my mind: if the BB want something typically and only belgian/french, would they have put black faces in the belgian/french databases? I don't think so. I think they want the db to represent the belgium in its reality. That's why we find all the faces in our databases and we should find all the names of our countries in our databases.
Otherwise, all the black faces will have typically and original french/belgian names? not realistic.

I'm not sure to have been clear enough. I'm sure BB wants to represent namegiving in Belgium as close as possible to the reality! But why did they created this percentage (use of different databases) if it wasn't the intention to be used (and is used in fact)? Name-creation in Belgium uses for a certain percentage also West and East-African name-database (as France is also using the West-African and some others).

I would also like to quote GM-Lord of Doom again where he explains the essence quite clear (He was already GM in the earliest times ans was able to folow these devellopments rather closer then most of us)

the names database is programmed to have a mix of names from diffrent databases, and the developpers have taken info from the internet with the populations of the countries to know how much% of each database they should use for each country. So if we put non-Belgian names in the Belgian database, the mix would not be right anymore, there would be too many foreign names, because they would have x% foreign names from theother databases, and then have an other y% of foreign names from our own databank.

nice you have taken an italian example as my last irl name is an italian one ;-)

I must admit I do not see the problem..
I think we're mixing up two things:
- the databases with different types of names: french ones, flemish ones, german, italian, arab, west-african, east african, .... names. (this is the list we're talking about in this topic)
- the belgium list used for namegiving for our newly created players. This list contents as wel french, flemish, arab, dutch, english, Greec, Italian (yes: Elio and Enzo included....), turkish,.....names, and these names all mixed up in a certain percentage based on internet info.

I wasn't there when these rules were implemented so I didn't folowed eventually discussions about this. But thinking somewhat further on:
- if we have f.i. a name list of first names starting with E, and we have to add 2 italian names in a list of 100. Which italian name should we choose: Enrico, Eugenio, Elio, Enzo, Ettore, Emilio, Eusebio, Ernesto, Ezio, Edgardo, Ermano,... or still another? don't forget we can use in this example only two names in order to keep the balance. Therefore a list with italians names is very usefull, as names can be altered and every name gets his chance (some note: some frequent used names are encoded in these lists twice or more)
- lists can be adapted to the actual situations in namegiving