The mystery of the Wu-Tang name generator

Hi, everybody! Tim Carmody here, guest-hosting for Jason this week.

You probably know that Donald Glover (actor on Community, writer on 30 Rock) also has a rap career under the stage name Childish Gambino. You may not know that the name “Childish Gambino” comes from a Wu-Tang Name Generator.

That’s half of the reason I’m here - I’m dead serious. Like I met RZA and he was like, “you’re a cool dude, man - and your name is perfect for you! It’s like that computer had a brain!” But yeah, I put my name in a Wu-Tang name generator and it spit out Childish Gambino, and for some reason I just thought that fit.

Now here’s where things get a little weird. There are multiple, competing Wu-Tang name generators. (Of course there are.) Most of them seem to work the same way — they run a script matching your name’s characters with a decent-sized database of Wu-sounding words, kind of like a hash. But little differences in the scripts or in the database give you different results.

For instance, at recordstore.com, the “Original Wu Name Generator” (tagline “WE CAN WU YOU!”) spits back “Erratic Assassin” (for “Timothy Carmody”), while “Tim Carmody” yields “Well-Liked Assman.” These names are both awesome.

But the “Wu-Tang Name Generator” at mess.be (“Become a real Wu warrior, entah ur full name ‘n smack da ol’ dirty button”), which proprietor Pieter Dom says was made in 2002, is totally different. There, “Timothy Carmody” and “Tim Carmody” return “Shriekin’ Wizard” and “Gentlemen Overlord,” respectively. Now, while these definitely sound like Wu names, they are definitely The W to the other site’s Enter the 36 Chambers.

Here’s the weird part: both of these Wu-Tang name generators return the same name for “Donald Glover.” It is, of course, “Childish Gambino.”

Is it just a quirk that whatever difference crept in affects most names, but not Donald Glover’s? Did one of the sites hard-code that result in, to boost its credibility with people who heard the Childish Gambino story? Or is Donald Glover somehow necessarily Childish Gambino, across all possible Wu-accessible worlds, in the same way that “Clifford Smith” is always and only “Method Man,” even when he pretends to be an actor?

I don’t think we can ever know. But just as Russell Jones was Ol’ Dirty Bastard, ODB, Dirt McGirt, Big Baby Jesus, and Ason Unique as well as Osirus, I am content to be known by many names under the Wu.

(Dedicated to “Sarkastik Beggar” and “Lesbian Pimp.” Via @hoverbird.)

Update: The TLDR podcast did a follow-up to this story: The Mystery of Childish Gambino.

• Childish Gambino
• Donald Glover
• language
• music
• Perl
• Wu-Tang Clan

Legend of the Black Perl

Black Perl is a poem written in valid Perl 3 code:

BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.

    open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);

write it, print the hex while each watches,

    reverse its length, write again;

    kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.

        unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),

sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");

    kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,

    values aside, each one;

        die sheep! die to reverse the system

        you accept (reject, respect);

next step,

    kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,

    wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";

    do it ("as they say").

do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).

return last victim; package body;

    exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,

    select (quickly) & warn your next victim;

AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.

    wait, wait until time;

    wait until next year, next decade;

        sleep, sleep, die yourself,

        die at last

# Larry Wall

It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s not bad for executable code.

• language
• Perl
• poetry
• programming

Scripting language comparisons

An extensive side-by-side reference sheet of four scripting languages (PHP, Python, Perl, and Ruby) with which you can compare how the different languages handle variable declarations, concatenations, objects, and hundreds of other things. Great cheatsheet for learning a new language when you’re already familar with one of the others.

• Perl
• PHP
• programming
• Python
• Ruby

I was telling a friend this weekend

I was telling a friend this weekend about an article I’d read long ago about Larry Wall approaching the development of Perl as if it were a natural language. I think this is the article in question. Perl, the first postmodern computer language and a conversation with Larry Wall also touch on Perl and linguistics.

Update: Here’s the original post to comp.lang.perl.misc by Wall. (thx, marc)

• language
• larrywall
• perl
• programming

Perl one-liner for checking if a number

Perl one-liner for checking if a number is prime. (via daringfireball)

• mathematics
• perl
• primenumbers
• programming