Manor Lords players delighted to discover a villager with an NSFW name, but the developer says it's historically accurate

A villager in a medieval city
(Image credit: Slavic Magic)

One of the joys of playing a city builder is peering down at the little people on your screen and watching what they're doing. Manor Lords is no exception—it's fun to sit back and observe your little 14th century peasants working in the fields, constructing buildings, and lugging resources from here to there as they go about their daily lives.

With a million Manor Lords players now closely watching the comings and goings of their villagers, one peasant's name keeps coming up because, well, it's kinda funny:

Cuntz.

That's right, a villager named Cuntz has already become a minor celebrity since Manor Lords launched into early access a few days ago. Check your own village and you'll probably find one, and since names are distributed randomly among your peasants, your Cuntz might be different from someone else's' Cuntz. For one player their Cuntz might be working (or not working) as an ox handler, but my own Cuntz is currently a gravedigger.

(Image credit: Slavic Magic)

Funnily enough, Cuntz isn't always a peasant. Several players have reported having an ox named Cuntz in their village. And don't forget about Lord Cuntz, because when you're starting a new game your character may also randomly receive that name:

(Image credit: Slavic Magic)

Yes, it's all very childish to be giggling over a somewhat NSFW name, but according to Manor Lords developer Grzegorz Styczeń, the joke was not intended. In a comment posted to Reddit, Styczeń stated that the name Cuntz, like all the names in Manor Lords, is historically accurate for the time period and region.

"Names were taken from a XIV century HRE census and then are assigned randomly without any special bias," Styczeń said.

Another reddit user filled in a few more blanks: "Cuntz or 'Kunz' in the German regions was a shortened form of the very common name 'Konrad' and itself a very common name then," CaptainMacObvious wrote, adding that another common name was Hinz, short for Heinrich (Henry). 

"Those names were so common that 'Hinz und Kunz' is still a saying in Germany today, referencing 'anyone and everyone,'"—similar to the way in the US we might use the term Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Does your Manor Lords village have its own Cuntz? An easy way to check is to click on each burgage in your town and select the 'People' tab, which will show you the names of each family member living there, and even draw a line to their current location. And if you don't see a Cuntz, don't worry! Using our Manor Lords beginner tips guide will help you grow your population, and a Cuntz is sure to move into your village soon. 

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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