Utility to generate code names, suitable for placeholders of project names.

Building

This is a scala-native project. The binary can be built by running ./mill codename.nativeLink. Version information is derived from git, with initial "v" dropped (e.g. the tag v1.2.3 represents version 1.2.3).

Download

If you are on Linux on an x86_64 platform, a pre-built binary can be obtained from the GitHub releases page, or with the following commands:

wget https://github.com/jodersky/codename/releases/download/v0.4.0/codename_linux_amd64.xz -O - | unxz - > codename && chmod +x ./codename

Examples

• codename "A a n" 6:

  earnestly rare clown

  very windy yaw

  awful patchy zero

  henceforth catchy graphite

  nonethless furious aleph

  otherwise jumpy route

• codename "a-n" 3

  mellow-gazelle

  united-five

  optuse-joke

• codename "A a n a a n n" 1

  approximately inherent omicron fabulous zillion unit set

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, especially new words! It's hard to describe what words should be included, but the rule of thumb is to use words that generally have a low frequency in English text (although not necessarily archaic), and that sound interesting when said out loud.

Usage

Refer to the help message of the utility (codename --help) for an authoritative answer.

Usage: codename [OPTIONS...] [SPECIFICATION] [NUM]
Generate a random codename according to a specification, a number of times
("A a n" 10 times by default).

Options:

  -h, --help        show help message
  -v, --version     show version information
  --entropy         show entropy information instead of generating code
                    names

Specification:

  SPEC ::= { 'A' | 'a' | 'n' | 'd' | 'g' | SEP }
  SEP  ::= char

where the quoted letters will be substituted randomly by the following:

  A: an adverb
  a: an adjective
  n: a nound
  d: a digit [0-9]
  g: a greek letter (name)

For example, the specification "A-a-n" will produce a code name such as:
"extra-pickled-umbrella".