Apparently I forgot to sleep
Feb. 5th, 2013 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethBy the numbers in the Magical Medieval City Guide my made up city has
377 taverns, 110 inns, and 9 restaurants
So, I started trying to name them.
I used a random names generator but there are few enough components they get repetitive inside of 100, and that's 400 short. Also they don't sound much like real pubs.
So I went to lists of real pubs. Except they aren't just a huge long list with only the names - unless someone knows a link like that - they're pubs and reviews and stars and stuff I don't want to copy paste. So I have copied, by typing, about a hundred pub names.
And that's still 300 short.
Some of it's just colors. There's the White Lion, Black Lion, Red Lion and Gold Lion. There's probably the same four of most other vaguely heraldic beasts you can name. Horses happen in many colors. Also bulls. The Cock tends to stand alone, or be Red, for some reason. Swans happen in Black or White. Ravens are a bit short on color variation. Pheasants too. And Magpies. Hawks I haven't seen be colors. There ain't as many Greens and so far no Blues. I was just reading a bit about low tech pigments and their Blue wasn't the kind of thing you throw on a pub sign, on account of it being made of crushed gems. But even if I get my heraldry books out and decide that the purple unicorn is a perfectly good name for a pub, it's still got to add up to 500 different pubs.
Norwich once managed a church for every Sunday and a pub for every day, and that's substantially more pubs than I can currently find a name. I know some of them were doubles, like the Coach and Horses, but at some point you've done the Old Fox, the New Fox, the Upper Fox and the Lower Fox, and maybe the Cunning Fox and the Fox Outside for the one that's outside the walls.
And there are still more pubs.
The Adam and Eve, or The Angel, might not survive the fall of civilisation, and The Artful Dodger seems unlikely to see out a few centuries. And anything more likely seen on a nightclub and not lasting the decade is right out. You can go far with tree names, but once you've got assorted Oaks, The Cherry Tree, the Apple Tree, the Linden... well, eventually you run out of types of wood people could identify by pub sign painting. Eventually you end up at the Hog in Armour or the Wig and Pistle, and Bread and Cheese or Slug and Lettuce aren't far behind.
And I have not yet run out of pubs to name.
King's Head, Queen's Head, and Turk's Head are fine, maybe Duke's and Duchess's heads too, but eventually you're down to the Squire's Head, and it's not that long a list.
Pretty soon I'm down to the somethingorother arms. It's hard to run out of those. You just have to assume every craft and family wants their arms on a pub.
Maybe I should go with Khan's or Patel's Arms, or start naming things for takeaways.
There's no rule a post apocalyptic future is more likely to still have The Rose and Crown than The Bombay Palace.
I realise attempting to design and name an entire town is slightly insane, but so are some of these numbers their random generation system comes up with. Nobody needs that many places to have a drink. Even if I decide a lot of them are milkshakes or fry ups or fish and chip shops rather than the sort of things 'tavern' usually covers, there's only so many people to go round.
Anyways. I'm only still awake because I forgot to sleep
and the cleaner is here
(I need bin bags for the big bin and also bleach and can't find the right notepad, I write it in the middle of this and I'm sure I'll remember.)
no, wait, the cleaner just left
so I can stop being strange with namings and maybe sleep now.
Or not. the big lorry is extremely screechy.
and I should probably stay awake until evening to try and get right way up again.
(but I should quit it with the names. too many names. too many.)
377 taverns, 110 inns, and 9 restaurants
So, I started trying to name them.
I used a random names generator but there are few enough components they get repetitive inside of 100, and that's 400 short. Also they don't sound much like real pubs.
So I went to lists of real pubs. Except they aren't just a huge long list with only the names - unless someone knows a link like that - they're pubs and reviews and stars and stuff I don't want to copy paste. So I have copied, by typing, about a hundred pub names.
And that's still 300 short.
Some of it's just colors. There's the White Lion, Black Lion, Red Lion and Gold Lion. There's probably the same four of most other vaguely heraldic beasts you can name. Horses happen in many colors. Also bulls. The Cock tends to stand alone, or be Red, for some reason. Swans happen in Black or White. Ravens are a bit short on color variation. Pheasants too. And Magpies. Hawks I haven't seen be colors. There ain't as many Greens and so far no Blues. I was just reading a bit about low tech pigments and their Blue wasn't the kind of thing you throw on a pub sign, on account of it being made of crushed gems. But even if I get my heraldry books out and decide that the purple unicorn is a perfectly good name for a pub, it's still got to add up to 500 different pubs.
Norwich once managed a church for every Sunday and a pub for every day, and that's substantially more pubs than I can currently find a name. I know some of them were doubles, like the Coach and Horses, but at some point you've done the Old Fox, the New Fox, the Upper Fox and the Lower Fox, and maybe the Cunning Fox and the Fox Outside for the one that's outside the walls.
And there are still more pubs.
The Adam and Eve, or The Angel, might not survive the fall of civilisation, and The Artful Dodger seems unlikely to see out a few centuries. And anything more likely seen on a nightclub and not lasting the decade is right out. You can go far with tree names, but once you've got assorted Oaks, The Cherry Tree, the Apple Tree, the Linden... well, eventually you run out of types of wood people could identify by pub sign painting. Eventually you end up at the Hog in Armour or the Wig and Pistle, and Bread and Cheese or Slug and Lettuce aren't far behind.
And I have not yet run out of pubs to name.
King's Head, Queen's Head, and Turk's Head are fine, maybe Duke's and Duchess's heads too, but eventually you're down to the Squire's Head, and it's not that long a list.
Pretty soon I'm down to the somethingorother arms. It's hard to run out of those. You just have to assume every craft and family wants their arms on a pub.
Maybe I should go with Khan's or Patel's Arms, or start naming things for takeaways.
There's no rule a post apocalyptic future is more likely to still have The Rose and Crown than The Bombay Palace.
I realise attempting to design and name an entire town is slightly insane, but so are some of these numbers their random generation system comes up with. Nobody needs that many places to have a drink. Even if I decide a lot of them are milkshakes or fry ups or fish and chip shops rather than the sort of things 'tavern' usually covers, there's only so many people to go round.
Anyways. I'm only still awake because I forgot to sleep
and the cleaner is here
(I need bin bags for the big bin and also bleach and can't find the right notepad, I write it in the middle of this and I'm sure I'll remember.)
no, wait, the cleaner just left
so I can stop being strange with namings and maybe sleep now.
Or not. the big lorry is extremely screechy.
and I should probably stay awake until evening to try and get right way up again.
(but I should quit it with the names. too many names. too many.)
no subject
Date: 2013-02-05 02:22 pm (UTC)I have never even been to London, but for some reason Pub names is one of my favorite wikipedia articles... :D
no subject
Date: 2013-02-05 09:00 pm (UTC)Now, there's the question of how good the adaptation is, and what simplifications were made, but we are talking about an era where the water wasn't necessarily safe (especially in the cities) and the best thing to drink was booze. I think I've run across the argument that beer--especially the dilute version--was much safer to drink (though that might apply to earlier in civilization--perhaps the Sumerian period).
So, yeah. They had an insane number of places to drink.
On the other hand, you get to control what the circumstances are in your post-apocalyptic world. Maybe the soil there is more fecund; maybe the water is better; maybe they have kept track of some medical advances ("Eating mouldy bread is good for a fever!"). Your choice.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 11:47 pm (UTC)http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm
it has numbers of people it takes to support a tavern or an inn:
Taverns/Restaurants 400
Inns 2,000
Magical Medieval City Guide has someone's profession per x people
Tavern Keepers 250
Inn Keepers 1300
Which is rather more of them, though I guess two or more could 'keep the same Tavern or Inn.
In a small city of 8K people you end up with 32 Tavern Keepers and 6 Inn Keepers.
38 pubs in an 8K city is small by Norwich standards.
But then there's the Structural Incidence table, which I've either read very wrong, or it makes 10% of buildings be Taverns.
Table IV.5-Structural Incidence lists the percentages of different structures found in each ward.
Table IV.5 — Structural Incidence says Tavern 10%, Inn 5% (or more or less depending on ward).
And then you get really insane numbers of buildings.
Of course it's highly likely my maths went wrong at some point, because I was doing this instead of anything where it might matter if it went wrong. It's the project I pick up when I'm ill or have been awake more than 24 hours. Here be math errors. Many of them.
But one set seems low and the other seems very, very high.