The Name Maze Project

Every section of the Doyoumaze website has a story. Today I tell you about the Name maze section of the website. (If you are just interested in HOW to make a maze of your name, I have that covered.) I thought people would enjoy seeing their name in maze form - a kind of personalized maze. If you want to do this on your own click on the link above, otherwise we continue on… Maybe it was my time in corporate America but I think these mazes would look good on a cubicle wall. And they are fun to make. I also thought they would make a nice gift. Print out a friends name and write a note thanking them for being amazing (or maybe a-maze-ing). Now the story of how I went about actually making the name mazes. Here were the stages I went through:

Stage 1 - Names of my Close Friends and Family

Initially I started out as anyone would making my close friends and family members names. That got me to 6 mazes….ok maybe a few more,. Let’s say about 25 mazes. I added these to the website and felt pretty good. Now if they visited my website I had the important people done.

Stage 2 - The Ten Most Popular Male and Female Names

I did a quick search for the 10 most popular names for Men and Women. This is where I found out the Top 10 Men’s names in the United States represent 23% of all Men’s names ( James, John, Robert, Michael, William, David, Richard, Charles, Joseph, and Thomas) and for Women the Top 10 represent 10.7% of all Women’s names (Mary, Patricia, Linda, Barbara, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Maria, Susan, Margaret, Dorothy). I thought it was interesting that the Men’s name database has 1200 different names while the Women’s name database has 4,275 names !!! I later realized this was partly because men have more standard name spellings than women (like Katherine & Catherine & Katharine & Kathryn).

At this point I could display all maze name images directly on the website (and not the name listings you see today).

Stage 3 - My LinkedIn Connections Names

I have approximately 460 connections on LinkedIn. I thought it would be nice to make a maze for each connection. The best part about this project was that I got to think about each person as I made their maze. The people I have lost touch with. My old co-workers from previous jobs. I have to admit, this was a very rewarding project simply because of this process. This project added 302 more unique names to the maze name section. I would like to thank the following names for being popular among my connections:

Michael and Michelle - 8 connections each

Brian, Rachel and Rick - 6 connections each

David, Greg, Jason, Jennifer, Mary and Richard - 5 connections each

Now, if you ask me to connect on LinkedIn you’ll have a much better chance if you have a (short) common name. Website wise this is where I had to take down the pictures of each maze name and use the name listing version you see today. Because once you have so many names, if you want the page to load quickly lots of images is not helping anyone.

Stage 4 - Close variations of Existing Names

If I make Richard, it is easy to make Ricardo. Debbie became Deb. Douglas became Doug. Frank became Fran. etc. Close variations added about 100 more name mazes to the portfolio.

Stage 5 - Top 100 Male/Female Names

I decided that with so many names done I wanted to see how many of the top 100 Men’s/Women’s names I had already mazed. The answer was 134. Since there were only 66 more names (out of the 200 names) that needed to be made I went ahead and finished all of them.

Stage 6 - Top 200 Male/Female Names

Well, I might as well keep going right……I added 132 more names (out of the 200) when this was complete. As I finished this up I found these statistics about how many US names I had covered with the project:

The top 200 Male names represent 72.5% of men’s names.

The top 200 Female names represent 58.2% of women’s names.

Plus I have 262 names not in the top 200 from the previous Stages 1-4. So I think I’m pretty well covered as a % of total US names. The final tally of name mazes ended up being 662…and growing. If you have a name I have not done yet, you can always request it here.

UPDATE:

Stage 7 - Top 300 Male /Female Names

I researched the next 200 overall names (thru #300) and I already had 52 of them on the site. That leaves 148 to make if I take this on, names like Agnes and Cecil. I completed this and along the way added in a few other similar names…+164 names…new total 826 !!!

Stage 8 - Regional names page - “The Land”

I decided to create a Cleveland names page. This added 57 additional names to the project, including some unique ones that everyone knows like LeBron, Kyrie, Zydrunas, Halle, Stipe, Urban, and Dolph. This is the first time I used colors other than black and white for these special edition name mazes. New total 883.

Stage 9 - Top European names

I went with Europe since they have names most closely related to our own but with nice variety. I used the top 10 lists I found online for Europe by country for both men and women. Not every name was done but this did add 161 new names and I broke the 1,000 barrier. You can thank Turkey for Zeynep and Slovenia for Zala. New total 1,044.

Stage 10 - Top Americas and Oceanic names

Kept with the International theme but felt like I needed to break it into parts. Again, like Europe I did not do every name in each top 10, just the most recognizable and any that appeared in multiple countries. I was very happy to add my first X name thanks to Mexico, Ximena. Haiti brought us Widelene and Peru gave us Milagros. I added 94 with this project. New total 1,138.

Stage 11 - Top African Names

I learned that South Africa has a thing for names like Blessing, Prince, Princess, and Faith. Also was able to add 4 “Y” names to the 6 I already had and another Z name. Overall Africa brought an additional 74 names. New total 1,212.

Stage 11.1 - National Bubba Day

National Bubba Day June 2nd meant an addition to the list, +1. New Total 1,213.

Stage 12 - Male names from Asia

Asia has such a wide variety of names I had to split it by gender. A mix of traditionally Muslim, Jewish and Asian names made this section varied as there was very little overlap between countries. There is also less overlap with traditional Christian names already on the site. We can thank China for short names like An, De and Yi. Our new first name alphabetically Aarav comes from India. Shout out to Pakistan for Zahid. And more “Y” Names, +6 from 10 before. Overall I added 126 additional names . New total 1.339.

Stage 13 - Female names from Asia

The second half of Asia added 108 new names. This included 2 Q’s, 5 X’s, 8 Y’s and 4 Z’s. I also added 13 names with dashes in them. Most of these names are ones I was unfamiliar with and they are all top ten in Asian countries….can’t imagine what an uncommon name is !!!! New total 1,447.

Stage 14 - Names from Movies

In an experiment to find more names to add to the website I decided to use the character names from movies I was watching until I generated at least 50 new names. I wondered how many movies I would need to watch before I hit 50. The answer was 24 movies !! Here are the movies I watched and the names that came from them:

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). The Western starring John Wayne and Dean Martin brought us the names Bud, and Curley. And yes, at some point Curley was a given name, not a nickname.

Big Jake (1971). Another John Wayne western. More nicknames that were once given names - Pop and Buck.

The Gunfighter (1950). Gregory Peck Western about a gunfighter who isn’t looking for trouble, but always seems to find it. Names: Hunt and August.

The Westerner (1940). Western starring Gary Cooper that deals with homesteaders in the early days of the West. Names: Cole, Hod and Shad.

Lonely Are The Brave (1962). Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau western. Names: Morey and Hinton.

High Sierra (1941). Humphrey Bogart is a gangster just out of prison doing what he knows best. Names: Red and Doc.

The Defiant Ones (1958). Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier are escaped convicts on the run. Name - Angus.

Days of Wine and Roses (1962). Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Great drama film about an alcoholic marriage. 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. New names were Kirsten, Ellis, Rad and Dottie.

Night of The Iguana (1964). Richard Burton and Ava Gardner star in this John Huston drama that brought us the name Hank.

They Shoot Horses Don’t They (1969). Jane Fonda stars in this drama about a dance marathon contest during the Depression. Names: Rollo and Shirl.

A Woman is a Woman (1961). Jean Luc-Godard comedy starring Anna Karina. Name: Emile

Bloody Sunday (2002). Historical drama about the Irish protest that resulted in a massacre by British troops. Names: Eamonn, Bernadette and Gerry.

Lovers of The Arctic Circle (1998). Finnish movie about a mystery and a romance. Names: Alvaro and Aki.

Tyrannosaur (2011). UK film about a violent man searching for redemption. Name: Gurav.

Dark Places (2015). Charlize Theron stars in this drama/mystery film that generated a surprising 7 names: LIbby, Lyle, Diondra, Trey, Debby, Magda and Runner. I also added Dion from Diondra.

Reign of the Supermen (2019). Some animated DC Comics Superman. This was an easy way to get the names Lex, Clark and Dabney.

The Commitments (1991). Alan Parker movie about starting a band in Dublin, Ireland. Names: Imelda and Mickah.

Three Identical Strangers (2018). Documentary about identical triplets that were split up at birth unbeknownst to them. Names: Hedy, Elliot, Eddy, and Mort.

O Lucky Man ! (1973). Malcolm McDowell is a naive salesmen. Names: Mick and Monty.

Secondhand Lions (2003). Michael Caine, Robert Duvall and Haley Joel Osmant star in this drama/comedy about a boy spending the Summer with his 2 wierd uncles. Names: Garth and Hub.

Missing (1982). Outstanding political drama starring Jack Lemmon. 0 names.

Suddenly Last Summer (1959). Elizabeth Taylor and Katherine Hepburn star in this drama/mystery. 0 names.

Seconds (1966). John Frankenheimer Sci-Fi flic starring Rock Hudson. Great premise, nice movie, 0 names.

Adam’s Rib (1949). Comedy Romance starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. This is the movie that got me to over 50 new names !! Names: Kip, Beryl and Olympia.

So what is next for name mazes ? What is Stage 15 ? Here are the options I am considering:

1. The next 100 names for men/women

I need to research the next 200 overall names, 100 from each gender (both thru #400). Hopefully a nice number of them are covered already on the site.

2. MORE Top international names

Keep with International by doing the most popular names in the world.

3. More regional names like the Cleveland section

4. The uncommon letters

Search out names that start with uncommon letters like U, Q, X, Y, and Z

5. Maze the names of everyone I meet in a day

6. Pick a random sports roster and maze all names

Wondering what happened ? Well here’s my next name maze project update !

Have an idea you’d like to see ? Let me know in the comments.

Other posts you may like:

What I use to make my mazes

10 Places Where you can Buy Spectacular Maze Art

The Surprising Benefits of Solving Mazes

Before the Mazes

Also known as Before the Mazes - What I Drew.

Some of my first mazes were hand drawn in 9 x 12 Artist’s Sketch pads, but these sketches did not start with mazes initially. I filled the blank pages of the sketch pads with drawings of all types. Pencil drawings of faces. Pen and marker drawings of objects. I experimented with many types looks and techniques. 90% of it was terrible, but 20% of it was interesting, ok maybe 10%. I tended to draw minimal designs with lots of spaces and when I found a look I liked I would use it multiple times. Let’s look at a few of the initial drawings.

The Unplugged Head. I used pencil to fill a head with thoughts (difficult to see on the scan) and gave it a electrical outlet plug on the back of the neck. The eye you see is in a state of hypnotization. I have always had a problem with Lemmings, not the game, that was great. The followers. This was probably done one day as I was thinking about that. In high school I bought fabric paint and drew this on a white t-shirt that became my favorite thing to wear, because, high school ?

I then started drawing faces made of 1-3 colors drawn with markers, heavily spaced and made of think lines like these. I made dozens of these. I tried to give personalities to faces with drawing them in interesting, happy colors.

My next branch led to keeping the colors, but allowing myself to use new line shapes to build more interesting characters. Things were still a bit weird, but I enjoyed spending my time filling large sketch pads with these concepts. Looking back, I always used white space as part of the images. Below are The Native American, Piano Man, and Gee Shucks.

I must have bought some colored pencils or the markers started to dry out, because the next set of drawings were all in colored pencil. Let’s call these Awkward Mosaic and Abstract Happy Face. I did these until I moved on to black and white drawings of faces closer to the ones above. Those are so terrible they will not be posted here.

I have no idea what I was thinking when I drew most of these things, like Awkward in Pajamas below. I do like the right arm bent positioning of the character as they give the gazer a feeling of “What do you think you are looking at?” (exactly they say to themselves).

Eventually I started drawing cartoons and mini comic strips. I created an alien character that I named Oscar. Oscar, or O.S.C.A.R. of course standing for….I have no idea but the A would be Alien. I must have been inspired by Alf or Third Rock From The Sun because I would put the alien in everyday situations. Eventually those aliens became mazes…which you can read about here !

So that’s how I started drawing. Check out my About Page for more information.

Other posts you may like:

What I use to make my mazes

10 Places Where you can Buy Spectacular Maze Art

The Surprising Benefits of Solving Mazes

Convert a Hand Drawn Maze to a Digital Maze in 3 steps

I used to make all my mazes by hand but now I prefer making digital mazes. Today’s post on converting a maze from a paper drawn maze to a digital maze has 3 parts: Part 1 is the 3 step process to do a maze conversion on your own. Part 2 is the story of how I decided to do a particular project with a completed example. And Part 3 shows you some maze conversion examples I mention in Part 2.

Part 1: HOW TO CONVERT A DRAWING TO A DIGITAL MAZE

This is not a magic solution. You will end up drawing the maze again using this process.

1. Use a scanner to get the mazes in digital form. (alternatively you can take a picture if you have a steady hand). Now I am assuming this is not a one step process that you want (although it could be for some of you). I am assuming you want a digital vector drawing of your maze that also allows you clean up any stray marks made during the initial drawing. If like most people you do not have a scanner, I used the scanner for free at my local library ! Hopefully you can do the same !

2. Open the File in Inkscape (or a similar design program)

   I do all of my maze making in Inkscape. Inkscape is a free open source vector graphics editor, but you can use a similar product if you already have the needed skills in that program. I found, that like most programs, Inkscape basics can be learned quickly playing around in the program. You can learn a bit more from YouTube videos, and to finally master it so you aren’t frustrated all the time (While muttering why can’t I just do XXXXX) that will just take time and practice. I just found something a few days ago than I needed for a year. Time and practice are your friend.

3. Draw the Maze over the Scan

   Here is where the skills come in. Use Inkscape to draw the vector maze on top of the original scan (it will become the background). You can decide if you want to make changes/fixes as you go (as I did for my Alien Mazes above). When you are finally finished, delete the original scan, leaving only the new vector based maze. Now it is easy to write make the maze, and if you do not think you have the confidence, practice and read some of these How to’s. Yes, in reality, Step 3 can actually be broken down into approximately 6 parts for the actual maze construction.

Part 2: THE STORY

When I first started making mazes in high school I drew with pen or markers on paper in Mead art sketch pad books. I mixed the mazes in with other random artwork that I did, switching things up to stay interested. Eventually I decided I liked making mazes and would do many in a row.

For fun I also created my own cartoon character who I would put in funny comic strips, well I thought they were funny. His name was Oscar and he was an alien who lived on Earth. Maybe this was influenced by the tv show ALF. I must have also been inspired by Where’s Waldo when I made the picture below I call An Alien Circus. Check out the great ruled paper ! Good enough to be in an art gallery - NO ! Bad enough to be in an bad art gallery - definitely closer ! But, it was fun to make and made me have to think about different shapes for different characters like the alien elephant and many alien circus clowns.

Well, after drawing a variety of mazes of various things I decided to combine the two with a maze of my alien character Oscar. Below is his face in maze form, although he does have a full body. I liked how it came out and filled a book with hand drawn Alien mazes, with 44 in total.

Looking back they were ok. Most of them look like amoebas more than aliens, but who are we to say what aliens really look like ? (if you are an alien - how did I do?) One thing I do appreciate is that I picked a theme and a particular look and I expanded on it. Since I can’t publish the 3-ring binder of that initial work I decided to do my best to publish it now in a better form. First, I scanned all the files (thank you public library !). Next, I had to split the files into individual files (oops!). Then I opened, named and centered each maze.

I’m going to be honest I was doing a bit of a Marie Kondo when I started this project, trying to rid myself of old papers by digitizing my art, and discarding the papers. Now, in most cases I did discard the paper and digitize the art. But for this, I still have the original hand drawn book of mazes.

This is when I decided I needed to create 2 books. One of the original artwork, with added covers (front and back), and numbered pages, and a second book converting and updating the maze artwork.

To create the conversion book I decided on a few rules:

1. Make the size of the new maze the same as the original.

2. Put the entrance and the exit to the maze in the same place as in the original.

3. Use a simple grid pattern for the maze, not the original pathways. While this changes the look of the mazes, it does make them much more solvable for younger solvers and standardizes their look even more.

4. Change the color of the walls from Blue ink to black.

How did it turn out ? Well I’ll leave that up to you to decide in Part 3. I think they came out ok. I certainly enjoyed making the digital conversions and hope to do more.

Here is a download for the converted version of the book called The Wild and Wacky Aliens MAZE Book. Obviously, as I mentioned I changed the mazes to be for Kids though I don’t have a specific age. Enjoy !

When I tried to create a book of the hand drawn mazes, but the file sizes where too big to create a book with the resources I have.

Enjoy the free downloadable kids maze book !!

So that was the story, now let’s look at some examples.

Part 3: 5 MAZE CONVERSION EXAMPLES

Each from the above downloadable book, The Wild and Wacky Aliens MAZE Book. Again, during my conversion I changed the maze pathways from hand drawn medium difficulty to a standard maze construction made for kids. I did this to make the maze difficulty more congruent to the subject matter (aliens).

Example #1:

And after our first example…do you prefer the perfect circle from digital or the uneven hand drawn ? Notice how I used different pathway widths in the conversion. The mouth is more narrow to give it a darker look.

Examples #2&3:

Much easier version in digital. I like these guys, or uh aliens. Examples #4&5:

Once you have a good handle on how to use a vector design program, converting a maze from hand drawn to digital will become second nature. Good luck !

More posts you may like:

The 10 Most Famous Labyrinths from Around the World

Discovering 7 of the World's Most Interesting Mazes

What I learned using AI to make maze art