[OPEN] Sims lose their first and last names

[mauvejinjo]

@MickCasanova's suggestion of manually re-typing names seems to work, and restores names lost to living Sims. As for the deceased Sims, I haven't yet found a solution.

[MickCasanova]

Just discovered yet another issue tied to this name change thing. It would appear that the change is also tied to any sims made prior to the 1.77 patch. So if you used one of the original NPC sims as a seed for your sim creation, and saved it to your library before the patch, once it is deployed in a new game after the 1.77 patch, the name will also revert to the original. So this bug not only affects old saves, but more importantly it will also revert sims saved prior to the patch. This is a real game breaker since there are millions of sims potentially affected in the Gallery. Obviously, this goes well beyond the Gallery.

[Ravingbantha]

I'm also having this problem, or something similar. I've some sims loose their first, last, or both names all together. Some sims are getting renamed to another sim, so far the renames are Sims are EA names not custom or random. This is where it gets weird. I have a base save game that I've built up a world with all my custom stuff in it. Each new game is from the base save file. Tonight I started a new game from the base file to try out the new stuff and it's this new game that the problem is happening with. However, upon looking at the base saved game, none of the names have been changed at all. The base game file was most recently updated and this saved last night.

[babuchas01]

This is going to wipe out millions of Sims from thousands of users. I do not understand how EA is not fixing this mess ASAP...

[MickCasanova]

I have yet to experience the vanishing names issue. Although it seems quite serious, I'm not even sure the two problems are directly related, but I suppose it's possible. In so far as why EA hasn't noticed? That's anyone's guess. All I can suggest is to please back up all your save files. Even those that you've already messed with. (There's always the possibility to recover from an earlier save) I don't guess this problem will be resolved any time soon, so it's better to be safe than sorry. This problem may well be "simaggedon" if not addressed quickly.

[Kita5399]

I just noticed this as well, Catarina Lynx had married one of the Munch brothers in my save and pre patch was saved as Catarina Munch. After the patch her name reverted to Catarina Lynx again. I’m going to look through that save and see if there are more (I assume there will be). I’m just glad I found this report before opening my really old save. 

[Zycele]

@Kita5399I'm having the exact same problem like you!
I was wondering why all my sims, that were married had their original last name back! I hope EA will fix that asap :/
Did anyone change them back and saw their sims permanently having their name changed or did it change back to their OG last names?
This just came to my mind which I haven't investigated yet!

[xFairyWing]

I just noticed this as well 

[Ravingbantha]

---

@makoto99 wrote:
Sorry in advance for a long post, but I seem to have found a workaround (and possible preventative fix, though it won't restore names already wiped out in a save game). Disclaimer - for people with large neighborhoods of people, it will require some bookkeeping...

I would recommend using the MCCC mod for this step at least, since using the "Relationships -> Add Relationship" interaction will show you a dialog with ALL sims in your world, where you can see if their names were wiped out.

Here are the steps:
1. Load your save game with names hopefully still there
2. Load a household
3. Using MCCC as above, click a sim and choose Relationships -> Add Relationship
4. Scroll through the whole list and write down sims that are missing their names
5. Repeat this a few times by quitting to Main Menu (WITHOUT SAVING!) and then reloading your save, and choosing a new household. This is because it seems a little random as to which households' names are affected, so doing it this way will sort of filter and catch them all.
6. Once you have your master list, load your save game again to begin the prevention.
7. For EACH AND EVERY family with a member whose name was wiped, you will need to Edit that family FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD (i.e. without loading a household, so you don't clobber the names) and change the affected Sims' names. For safety, I just changed every Sim name in each family. It did not seem to require changing the last name... just changing the first works. All I did was add a bunch of capital Z's to the end of the name so it's obvious what I added.
8. Save your family in the Household editor, rinse and repeat for ALL the rest of your families that had the issue.
9. Once you've successfully edited all your affected families' names, SAVE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD GAME.
10. This may not be required, but I did it anyway... Quit to Main Menu and reload your game.
11. Now the "prevention" - go back through all those families again, and revert the names back to their original names by removing the Z's (or whatever you did to change them). Again, DO NOT load any households to play yet, do this from the Household Manager at the neighborhood level.
12. Once all names have been reverted back to their originals, SAVE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD GAME AGAIN.
13. Again this may not be required, but quit to main menu and reload your save game.
14. You should now be able to load a few random households and click Relationship -> Add Relationship on a sim and scan all the other households to verify that no more names got clobbered.
15. Once you're satisfied your Sims are safe, you are good to go - or so it seems.

I haven't tested this for an extended time, but it seems to work after an hour or 2 at least. Also, this won't prevent name clobbering for ancestry/dead sims since you can't edit them (that I'm aware of anyway), so unfortunately I have no real help for people with that version of this bug.

Hope this helps people while we wait for an official fix!

---

Has your fix held since implementing it?

[Ravingbantha]

---

@MickCasanova wrote:

It's a whole lot simpler. From World View, of a given save, just change the names back in CAS and save the family. This bug only seems to affect games that were saved prior to the patch. Once the names of sims in the save have been edited and saved, upon return to that save, everything sticks as it should. Unfortunately, any and all saves prior to the patch will display the names of the original NPC they were changed from. This of course doesn't help much for people who have played a legacy game for years only to have it destroyed by an idiotic change.

---

I can attest that it applies to new games as well. Just started a whole new game this morning, took all the old save files out, added in only a dozen or so Sims from my library, and the game still had the same issue.