About latvian names
Gendered endings do the talking here, with masculine results like "Alvijs Brunkevičs" closing on s and feminine ones like "Alīne Ozoliņa" and "Hedviga Kalniņa" softening into a. Many of the surnames translate to oaks, hills, and grasses, which rewards writers building rural Latgale farmsteads or Riga apartment blocks. Keep the macrons and cedillas, since stripped spellings lose the Baltic character.
How latvian names are built
A Latvian name uses gender-specific surname banks. The male pattern joins a 1200-entry male given bank to a 171-entry masculine surname bank (Arvo Bergmanis, Damir Vanags, Eduards Mednis). The female pattern joins a 1200-entry female given bank to a 114-entry feminine surname bank (Kristela Līce, Lorita Treija).
Arvo Bergmanis
Arvo + Bergmanis
male given name plus masculine surname
Kristela Līce
Kristela + Līce
female given name plus feminine surname
Damir Vanags
Damir + Vanags
male given name plus masculine surname
Sourced from Attested public Latvian name data (Wikipedia and Wiktionary category memberships; Wikidata given names by gender) (CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikidata CC0 1.0).
Naming notes
The two surname banks are separate slots, so a masculine surname only attaches to a male given name and a feminine surname only to a female given name. The given-name banks are full at 1200 each while the surname banks are small (171 masculine, 114 feminine), so first names vary far more than family names.
Questions about latvian names
- Why does this set use two separate surname banks?
- Surnames are split into a 171-entry masculine bank and a 114-entry feminine bank, each wired to its matching given-name bank, so the male and female patterns draw surnames from different pools.
- Why does the first name change so much more than the surname?
- The given-name banks hold 1200 entries each against 171 masculine and 114 feminine surnames, so the generator cycles through surnames faster.
- How is a full name built?
- The male pattern joins a male given name to a masculine surname and the female pattern joins a female given name to a feminine surname, as in Arvo Bergmanis or Kristela Līce.