Names and symbols

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Many things generated by the game, such as sites, artifacts, symbols of office and citizens of a civilization, are given individual names by the game. Along with also getting generated names, many creature groups are also given references to individual symbols, in the form of descriptive text.

Names

Unlike pre-defined content, such as most creature types, inorganic materials, and standard items, much of the content generated by the game is also given a generated name of some form. These are generally chosen from a combination of sources. Depending on context, and the possible combinations, many will be unique within each newly generated world. Some examples of this include the individual names of: megabeasts and forgotten beasts, group symbols, artifacts, and written content.

Probably the most obvious example is dwarf names; although each main civilization has their own set of criteria for generating their citizens' names.

Every fortress has a name. Sometimes you forget what that name is. If you are playing in Fortress Mode, the name of your fortress should be displayed at the top left part of the screen.

Custom names

Custom names have no effect on gameplay, but there are a lot of options which can be accessed when embarking and selecting prepare carefully, or in the fortress mode interface, when choosing a symbol of office.

Embark menu custom name/symbol buttons

You can choose the name of your own fortress, and the name and symbol of your founding group during the Embark process. When you reach the stage where you are deciding on your founders' skills and starting items, select "Fortress Name" or "Group Name", at the bottom of the screen, to choose your fortress or group name. You will be given a semi-random name automatically. Names are often compounds of two dwarven words. You may craft a far more elaborate moniker than what is chosen by the name generator.

Fortress and group names have this format:

[Front][Rear] the [Adj 1] [Adj 2] [hyphen compound]-["the" Noun] of ["of" noun]

The front compound forms the first half of your fortress's name. Choose from an extremely long list of words. Select clear, to clear a word selection--your fortress does not need ANY of these words to be chosen (i.e. a blank name) to be legal. At the top of the screen, you can search for a word (in English).

Searching for "war" for a custom fortress name

The rear compound forms the second half of your fortress's name, which is combined with no spaces ("Foobar" instead of "Foo Bar").

Adjectives, at first glance, it appears these do nothing, but they give up to two words after your compound word (above) separated by spaces that are the adjectives to "The" X or "Of" X word choice (see below).

The hyphen command adds a third word joined by a hyphen to your "The" X or "Of" X word:

• Foobar the Great
• Foobar of Death

With Adjectives and Hyphen compound:

• Foobar the Great Moral Thraal-Generals
• Foobar the Goblin-Chunks of Exploding

With no front & rear compounds:

• The Great Deadly Foobar
• The Foobar of Foobars
• Of Foobars

Symbols

One of the features created during worldgen, that are also given generated names, are group symbols. These are assigned to various categories of individually simulated creatures and civilization groups. These symbols all have descriptions of images, with references taken from a comprehensive selection of concepts, entities, and items. Usually this includes how these subjects are interacting with each other, within the symbol description. The references can vary from mundane and pre-determined, such as cheese and cats, to other generated content, such as historical figures and artifacts.

Custom symbols

Custom group symbol options

When embarking, if you choose to prepare carefully, you will be given the option to customize your group symbol. The options for doing this are similar to choosing a custom name, but have the capacity to be even more elaborate and long-winded than even custom names allow; giving you choices for representing nearly all named entities in the game and deciding their relationship(s) to each other.

Action and relation list

Possible actions or relationships

action	relation
	X is admiring Y
X is being flayed	X is being flayed by Y
X is being mutilated	X is being mutilated by Y
X is being shot	X is shooting Y
X is being tortured	X is torturing Y
X is burning	X is burning Y
X is contemplating	X is contemplating Y
X is cooking	X is cooking Y
X is cringing
X is dead	X is devouring Y
	X is embracing Y
X is engraving	X is engraving Y
X is falling	X is fighting with Y
X is in a fetal position
	X is greeting Y
	X is hanging from Y
	X is hiding Y
	X is impaled on Y
X is laboring
X is laughing
X is making a plaintive gesture	X is massacring Y
X is making a submissive gesture
X is melting
X is praying	X is praying to Y
	X is prostrating itself before Y
	X is raising Y
	X is refusing Y
X is screaming	X is speaking with Y
X is smeared out into a spiral
X is striking a menacing pose	X is striking down Y
X is striking a triumphant pose
X is suffering	X is surrounded by Y
X is traveling
X is unnaturally contorted
X is weeping
X is withering away
X looks confused
X looks dejected
X looks offended
X looks terrified

See also

• Name
• Symbol disambiguation