A simple Markov chain to generate nicknames or fake English words.

markov.py

import collections
import random
import re
import string

alphabet = string.ascii_lowercase

# Make a counter for each lowercase letter, and add a count to it 
# whenever a letter follows it in /usr/share/dict/words
counters = {letter: collections.Counter() for letter in alphabet} 
raw_words = [word for word in open('/usr/share/dict/words', 'r').read().splitlines()]

# Clean up the words by making them lowercase and removing any 
# non-alphabetical characters
words = [re.sub(r'[^a-z]', r'', word.lower()) for word in raw_words]

# Get a count of following letters for each word and populate counters
for word in words:
    for index in range(len(word) - 1):
        counters[word[index]][word[index+1]] += 1

# Make a list of strings starting with random letters
names = [ random.choice(alphabet) for _ in range(20) ]

# Iterate through each name and, using the predetermined probabilities
# of one letter following another, choose the next letters randomly
for name in names:
    while len(name) < 6:
        choices = counters[name[-1]].elements()
        name += random.choice(list(choices))
    print name