I need to generate 1000 unique first name In Python

Question

I need to generate 1000 unique first names and store them in a list. I am using Python faker but getting so many repeated values.

import random
from random import shuffle
from faker import Faker

fake = Faker()
fake.random.seed(4321)  

first_n=[]
for i in range(1000):
    name=fake.first_name()
    if name in first_n:
        first_n.append("Repeat")
    else:
        first_n.append(name)

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Instead of generating random values and then checking if they're unique, retrieve the list of the names stored in the provider you're using, shuffle them and return the first 1000. That way you won't run into collisions at all. There's about 7k first names defined in the en provider, while the other languages may have far less - making collisions rather certain as you're getting further into the sequence.

from random import shuffle, seed
from faker.providers.person.en import Provider

first_names = list(set(Provider.first_names))

seed(4321)
shuffle(first_names)

print(first_names[0:1000])

Answer 2

Youll want to store data in a set instead of a list to prevent duplicates

Then you can use a while loop

first_n = set()
while len(first_n) < 1000:
    first_n.add(fake.first_name())