Name Generator for C++

Requires C++23 (e.g., -std=c++23 for GCC/Clang, /std:c++latest for MSVC).

API Reference · Usage Guide · Releases

Culturally appropriate first names and surnames from popular name databases, by culture and gender.

Features

• Name Generation. Randomly generates first names from popular name databases, organized by gender and culture.

• Surname Generation. Randomly generates surnames, organized by culture.

• Full Names and Naming Conventions. get_full_name composes a name by the culture's convention (family name first, two surnames, patronymics); get_child_name, get_parent_name and get_married_name share surnames between people by the same rules.

• Full Name Chaining. Append one or more names and surnames with an intuitive chainable API.

• 105 Cultures Supported. Afghan, Albanian, Algerian, American, Angolan, Argentinian, Austrian, Azerbaijani, Bahraini, Bangladeshi, Belgian, Bolivian, Botswanan, Brazilian, British, Bruneian, Bulgarian, Burkinabe, Burundian, Cambodian, Cameroonian, Canadian, Chilean, Chinese, Colombian, Costa Rican, Croatian, Cypriot, Czech, Danish, Djiboutian, Dutch, Ecuadorian, Egyptian, Emirati, Estonian, Ethiopian, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Ghanaian, Greek, Guatemalan, Haitian, Honduran, Hong Konger, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indian, Indonesian, Iranian, Iraqi, Irish, Israeli, Italian, Jamaican, Japanese, Jordanian, Kazakh, Korean, Kuwaiti, Lebanese, Libyan, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Macanese, Malaysian, Maldivian, Maltese, Mauritian, Mexican, Moldovan, Moroccan, Namibian, Nigerian, Norwegian, Omani, Palestinian, Panamanian, Peruvian, Polish, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Qatari, Russian, Salvadoran, Saudi, Serbian, Singaporean, Slovenian, South African, Spanish, Sudanese, Swedish, Swiss, Syrian, Taiwanese, Tunisian, Turkish, Turkmen, Uruguayan, Yemeni.

• Weighted Selection. Names are weighted by their popularity rank in each country so that common names appear more often than rare ones (see Data and Method).

• Dataset Tiers. Choose between a compact lite dataset (3 MB, up to 500 names per list) or the full dataset (41 MB, complete name lists).

• ISO 2-Letter Codes. to_culture() and to_gender() for converting strings to enums.

• Resource Inspection. has_resources() lets you verify databases loaded before generating.

• Deterministic Seeding. Per-call get_name(name_request, seed) (the request carries the gender and culture) for reproducible results, and name::seed() for replaying a previous generation, appended parts included.

• Batch Generation. Generate thousands of results from one seed, on several threads with the same output for any thread count, optionally unique by a key, and stream them as JSON Lines or CSV (see the usage guide).

• Identical Everywhere. A seed gives the same name on every compiler, standard library and CPU (GCC, Clang, MSVC, Emscripten; x86-64 and ARM64), checked by known-answer tests.

• Extensible Data. Load your own .names layers on top of the shipped lists to add, reweight or remove names (extend()), checked before they are applied.

• JSON and Replay. to_json() on every result, and a signature() recording the seed and the data it came from.

• Compiled-in Data. Define DASMIG_NAME_EMBED to build the lite tier into the program, for WebAssembly and other builds without files.

• Multi-Instance Support. Construct independent ng instances with their own name databases.

Integration

namegen.hpp is the library released here. Keep core.hpp and the core/ directory (dasmig-core) in the same directory. Add

#include <dasmig/namegen.hpp>

to the files you want to use it in, and supply the resources folder (or define DASMIG_NAME_EMBED).

Version 3 changes every seeded result; see Migrating from v2. Version 4 makes name_request the only way to call a getter; see Migrating from v3.

Usage

Due to the necessity of supporting multiple culture characters and the way std::string works on Windows, this library uses std::wstring for all generated names; dasmig::core::to_utf8() converts them, and to_json() is UTF-8.

When requesting a name for the first time the singleton loads the lite tier, from the compiled-in copy or from resources/lite (it looks in resources, ../resources, name-generator/resources and ../name-generator/resources). Manually load the resources folder if it's in a different location, or use load(dataset) to pick between the lite and full tiers. Loading replaces what was loaded; extend() adds to it.

#include <dasmig/namegen.hpp>

using ng = dasmig::ng;

// Load the lite dataset (3 MB, up to 500 names per list).
(void)ng::instance().load(dasmig::dataset::lite);

// Or load the full dataset (41 MB, complete name lists).
// (void)ng::instance().load(dasmig::dataset::full);

// Manually load a custom directory if necessary.
// ng::instance().load("path/to/resources");

// Generate a name of any culture and any gender.
std::wstring name = ng::instance().get_name({});

// Generate a female name of any culture.
std::wstring female_name = ng::instance().get_name({.gender = dasmig::gender::f});

// Generate a male Bulgarian name.
std::wstring bulgarian = ng::instance().get_name({.gender = dasmig::gender::m,
                                                  .culture = dasmig::culture::bulgarian});

// Generate a full name: first + two surnames.
std::wstring full = ng::instance().get_name({}).append_surname().append_surname();

// Access individual parts.
auto n = ng::instance().get_name({}).append_surname();
for (const auto& part : n.parts())
    std::wcout << part << L" ";

// Deterministic generation — same seed always produces the same name.
auto seeded = ng::instance().get_name({.gender = dasmig::gender::m,
                                       .culture = dasmig::culture::american}, 42);

// Replay a previous name using its seed.
auto replay = ng::instance().get_name({.gender = dasmig::gender::m,
                                       .culture = dasmig::culture::american},
                                       seeded.seed());

// The result as JSON, with the seed and the data it came from.
std::string json = seeded.append_surname().to_json();

// Add names of your own on top of the shipped lists.
ng::instance().extend("mods/brazilian_female.names");

// Independent instance with its own databases.
ng my_gen;
my_gen.load("path/to/resources");
std::wstring name2 = my_gen.get_name({}).append_surname();

For the complete feature guide — cultures, chaining, thread safety, seeding, extending data, compiled-in data, and more — see the Usage Guide. Where the names come from and what they leave out: Data and Method.

Building

make            # example
make test       # tests
make bench      # benchmarks, results in build/bench.tsv
make test-embed # tests with the lite tier compiled in
make coverage   # code coverage
make lint       # clang-tidy
make docs       # API docs
make embed      # regenerate dasmig/namegen_data.hpp from resources/lite

Compiler Support

Tested with:

• Clang 18+ (-std=c++23)
• GCC 14+ (-std=c++23)
• MSVC 19.38+ (/std:c++latest)
• Emscripten 3.1.74

Dependencies

Dependency	Version	Bundled	Purpose
dasmig-core	1.3	Yes (core.hpp, core/)	Platform-independent random engine and distributions, data layers, JSON
Catch2	3.x	Yes (amalgamated)	Unit testing

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License

This library is released under the MIT License.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2020-2026 Diego Dasso Migotto