Printing random names on a file

Question

I was wondering how to print random names from a file. Basically there are 3 files which are surnames,male names and female names. The files have more than just the names. They have numbers as well. Here's an example of what the file looks like:

    SMITH   1.006    2,501,922  1
    JOHNSON 0.81     2,014,470  2
    WILLIAMS    0.699    1,738,413  3
    JONES   0.621    1,544,427  4
    BROWN   0.621    1,544,427  5
    DAVIS   0.48     1,193,760  6
    MILLER  0.424    1,054,488  7
    WILSON  0.339    843,093    8
    MOORE   0.312    775,944    9

I want the output to print out a last name and first name(no numbers) Here is my code so far. It works but it prints out the numbers.

import random

def random_names(surname,male_names,female_names,integer):
names1 = open('surnames.txt', 'r')
names2 = open('malenames.txt', 'r')
names3 = open('femalenames.txt', 'r')
read1=names1.read().split()
read2=names2.read().split()
read3=names3.read().split()

gender_options = ('male', 'female')
count = 0

while count<integer:
    gender_pick=random.choice(gender_options)

    if gender_pick == 'male':
        first_name=random.choice(read2)
    elif gender_pick == 'female':
        first_name=random.choice(read3)

    last_name=random.choice(read1)
    print (first_name,last_name)
    count = count+1


random_names('surnames.txt', 'malenames.txt', 'femalenames.txt',10)

Even when I modify it to read2[0] read1[0] read3[0], it just prints out the letters.

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Answer 1

Define a function get_names(filename) that extracts all names from a file eg:

def get_names(filename):
    with open(filename) as file:
        return [line.split(None, 1)[0] for line in file if line.strip()]

Test it separately and then use it in your script eg:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import itertools
import random

def generate_random_names(surnames, male_names, female_names,
                          choose=random.choice):
    while True:
        # make male/female names equally likely
        forename = choose(choose([male_names, female_names]))
        yield forename, choose(surnames)

name_lists = map(get_names, ['surnames.txt', 'malenames.txt', 'femalenames.txt'])
fullnames = generate_random_names(*name_lists)    
print(list(itertools.islice(fullnames, 50)))

This code may generate duplicate full names. To choose k unique random elements from a population use random.sample() instead.