Dwarf Names, Nicknames, etc

[channeljohn]

So far, I've been loving the depth and !FUN! of DF, but I find I'm really struggling to connect with my dorfs and follow their stories -- which is my favorite part of games like this -- because of the naming system. IRL, I have a pretty healthy dose of ADHD (fr and lifelong, not self-diagnosed) and have a hard enough time remembering actual humans' names 5 seconds after I've heard them, let alone two long, weird dwarvish names that look like gibberish (though I know they translate to English).

I've given them nicknames that I can connect to a little better while managing jobs and finding them on the map, but any time I get a message about a dorf, a dorf goes crazy, a dorf dies, a dorf makes an artifact, a dorf needs a memorial, I want to look them up in Legends, etc, DF uses one of their dwarvish names instead of the nickname I gave them, meaning I often have no idea whom they're talking about.

The result is, 300-ish hours into my first fortress, I still struggle to remember any individual dwarvish name (they all run together in my brain) and, thanks to the fact that related dorfs don't share last names, I have almost no sense of family lines within my fortress. Whose kids are these? Every time I want to know, I have to go dig through my dorf population list to find who's related to whom so I can tell if there's a cool storyline happening or if Kosoth Mistemdodok is going to be upset bc their kid, Kulet Mesirkadol just got eaten by a swamp monster, and whether their brother, Kivish Bekomsazir is going to need some time off chores.

I ended up keeping a journal of dorf names paired with the nicknames I've given them and grouped into families (as well as what god(s) they worshipped, etc) just to try to wrestle some sense of narrative continuity out of the gameplay but, tbh, that seems a little unnecessarily unwieldy when most games that allow you to change names will then actually use that name in the various dialogs that pop up rather than insisting on using the old name you were trying to replace.

SO HERE'S MY QUESTION(S): Is there some way to rename dorfs so that the game will actually use that name across the board rather than sometimes using the nickname, sometimes using the dwarvish name? It can be an option I've missed or a mod that's out there... I really don't care. I love this game but I legit hate the way names are handled. It throws up a wall between me and immersion in my fortress's stories that I'd love to tear down.

I'm hoping some of you long-time dorf-heads might be able to point me in a direction that can help me tailor the experience of the game to one that, for me and my ADHD, would be a little more immersive. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, y'all!

[Fel]

There isn't, sadly.
But it is something that is known by the dev (they even mentionned it during blind's video) so it might get better at some point, it's just not a priority so it's unknown as to when it will happen.

[malthenielsen]

I did post a suggestion on Bay12Games to change names for places. Even without adhd I cannot for the life of me remember the names of places. Like the game tells me many times where the elf traders are from, but I cannot remember the name.

In adv mode, I need to look up like what is the name for my home town or the name of a roc I killed.

I never thought about individual names, but yeah, it probably needs like 10 times more names so you don't have 10 dwarves with the same name and it sounds like a good idea to make second names meaningfull.