Show HN: Japanese City Name Generator – Using a Simple 3-Layer MLP

 (citygen.freemanjiang.com)

15 points | by freemanjiang14 hours ago

6 comments

  • stuartcw4 hours ago
    If you used the kanji names of the cities and towns it would be a lot more realistic.

    I’ve lived in Japan since 1988 and this just seems like a list of jibberish to me. Japanese city names are, like English city names, made up of meaningful components i.e. Newbridge, 新橋,しんばし, Shinbashi. So there is nothing to get a hook on. It’s just syllables.

    Try it with 2000 English city names and you will get the same quality of output.

  • freemanjiang6 hours ago
    One thing is that this is trained on an English, character-level representation of kana characters, so it's possible it generates names that are not legal in the Japanese syllabary
    • RestartKernel5 hours ago
      Have you tried approaching this with the kanji instead? That seems like free tokenisation.
  • kazinator9 hours ago
    @freemanjiang, you might enjoy jp-hash: https://www.kylheku.com/cgit/jp-hash/about/
  • cedws10 hours ago
    I got Kanegawa, which is a real place, so I'd say it's pretty accurate!
    • fph9 hours ago
      Maybe that name already was in the training set tho?
    • gammastipend8 hours ago
      [dead]
  • ranger_danger8 hours ago
    I'm not sure why ML is even necessary? Practically every combination of characters (kana characters, where there's always a vowel at the end of each mora unless it's an "n") is already valid and doesn't even sound weird.

    Can someone explain how a random() function given a list of kana characters could not produce equally as good names?

    • freemanjiang6 hours ago
      Hmm I'm not convinced that uniform sampling from all possible kana characters necessarily leads to Japanese-sounding city names. I think the actual distribution does have a pattern (eg. yama appearing more frequently).

      Here are 50 ones I got Claude to generate from the uniform distribution: ['wamorumura', 'sohikotake', 'hiteitewau', 'romekarumu', 'nehami', 'miruyake', 'shiyuhaki', 'ahiyo', 'homaso', 'chionohoratsu', 'akusoyo', 'kiuhi', 'karoso', 'suhoheso', 'muchichi', 'mahakekanuto', 'usatsuwotoro', 'namusu', 'sokomeni', 'hakureromake', 'tosukonuka', 'haokehaso', 'nsesutemei', 'womiku', 'noereyasou', 'suyakenosu', 'ritasaifuka', 'ruremoteshi', 'yuhowotsuhie', 'torarenumeho', 'rutsueto', 'hamiakaki', 'sutsuyosano', 'yasotawaku', 'kihaso', 'koairieke', 'hosuriihiwa', 'horotowanno', 'wokiu', 'tanasochiriwo', 'otosetanu', 'rakamotorure', 'hawaniu', 'emoshiratsuhe', 'naroman', 'mohaesa', 'soniruta', 'nofuni', 'kayatakera', 'natayamume']

    • asukachikaru5 hours ago
      Because Japanese words aren't simply a string of random characters, like a string of eight English alphabets doesn't suddenly make it meaningful city names such as Reading or Brighton.
  • gammastipend8 hours ago
    [dead]