Soldier Name Stats
Name Sets
There are six sets of X-COM soldier names, each composed of 20 first names and 20 last names. 5 of the 20 first names in each set are female (based on SOLDIER.DAT byte 67), denoted by an asterisk:
American Set British Set French Set Austin Bradley Adam Bailey Armand Bouissou * Barbara Bryant Alan Blake Bernard Bouton Calvin Carr * Andrea Davies Claude Buchard Carl Crossett Arthur Day * Danielle Coicaud * Catherine Dodge Brett Evans Emile Collignon Clarence Gallagher Damien Hill Gaston Cuvelier Donald Homburger David Jones Gerard Dagallier Dwight Horton Frank Jonlan Henri Dreyfus Ed Hudson * Helen Martin * Jacqueline Dujardin * Evelyn Johnson James Parker Jacques Gaudin Kevin Kemp * Jane Pearce Jean Gautier Lester King John Reynolds Leon Gressier Mark McNeil * Maria Robinson Louis Guerin Oscar Miller Michael Sharpe Marc Laroyenne * Patricia Mitchell Neil Smith Marcel Lecointe Samuel Nash Patrick Stewart * Marielle Lefevre * Sigourney Stephens Paul Taylor * Micheline Luget Spencer Stoddard Robert Watson Pierre Marcelle Tom Thompson * Sarah White Rene Pecheux Virgil Webb Scott Wright * Sylvie Revenu German Set Japanese Set Russian Set * Christel Berger Akinori Akira Anatoly Andianov Dieter Brehme Isao Fujimoto Andrei Belov Franz Esser Jungo Ishii * Astra Chukarin Gerhard Faerber Kenji Iwahara Boris Gorokhova * Gudrun Geisler * Mariko Iwasaki Dmitriy Kolotov Gunter Gunkel Masaharu Kojima * Galina Korkia Hans Hafner Masanori Koyama Gennadi Likhachev * Helga Heinsch * Michiko Matsumara Grigoriy Maleev Jurgen Keller Naohiro Morita Igor Mikhailov * Karin Krause * Sata Noguchi Ivan Petrov Klaus Mederow Shigeo Okabe Leonid Ragulin Manfred Meyer Shigeru Okamoto * Lyudmila Romanov Matthias Richter Shuji Sato Mikhail Samusenko Otto Schultz * Sumie Shimaoka Nikolai Scharov Rudi Seidler Tatsuo Shoji * Olga Shadrin Siegfried Steinbach Toshio Tanida Sergei Shalimov Stefan Ulbricht Yasuaki Tanikawa * Tatyana Torban * Uta Unger Yataka Yamanaka Victor Voronin Werner Vogel * Yoko Yamashita Vladimir Yakubik Wolfgang Zander Yuzo Yamazaki Yuri Zhdanovich
Columns show first and last names for each set of 20. There is no association between a particular first name and last name (above) - first names are randomly combined with last names from the same nationality. So you may see an Austin Bradley, but you will never see an Austin Bailey. There are 2,400 possible unique names (20x20x6), a fourth of which are female.
When generating a new soldier's name, the game code checks for name duplication ten times against existing soldier names (including any deceased soldiers still in SOLDIER.DAT). This makes duplicate names infinitesimally rare. If you have the maximum of 250 soldiers, 250/2400 gives a 10.42% chance each try, but raised to the 10th power this becomes 1.5x10-10 (i.e., 1 in 7 billion names). If, like most folks, you have less than 250 soldiers, duplicates will be even rarer. With the 8 starting soldiers, it only happens 1 in 6x1024 times. So duplicates are practically impossible. But if you change a soldier's name, even just to add an asterisk, it will no longer match game-generated ones, and might appear again.