1. GirlWriter101

    GirlWriter101 Banned

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    Creating Place Names in Fantasy

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by GirlWriter101, Oct 13, 2019.

    Hello everyone! I know there may be a thread like this out there already, but if so, I don't know how to find it. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone wants to share their processes of coming up with place names in fantasy, specifically high fantasy. I have seen a number of ways to do it, my favorite being to name places for their appearance or the weather around them, (Gray Ward, Rose Lake, Ivory Towers), but I was wondering what other might have done when facing the need to create a name for cities, towns, villages, and other such places.
     
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  2. RoseScript

    RoseScript New Member

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    Your idea seems great! I should definitely use that method more! The way I find most of my names are online generators (searching up fantasy place name generator) or using regular names. Such as names like " Aurora" or "Marigold".
     
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  3. EFMingo

    EFMingo A Modern Dinosaur Supporter Contributor

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    I'm not going to lie, so do I. I know it's kind of tacky and not the most intelligent method, but mixing and matching name generator names has saved me the trouble of pondering over a character name many a time. At the end of the day, unless it's quintessential to the plot, unless the name is God-awful,it doesn't matter that much.
     
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  4. GirlWriter101

    GirlWriter101 Banned

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    It's good to see new people! It's something that has worked well for me, and the way you have been doing things is another good one.
     
  5. GirlWriter101

    GirlWriter101 Banned

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    It's not tacky, I have some things similar
     
  6. badgerjelly

    badgerjelly Contributor Contributor

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    I just make things up like Zalador. I have written and posted a piece of prose describing this city. If I have a place in mind I just come up with a name that suits; and if need be add nicknames. I don’t use English words like Grey or Rose, but I do copy items from different languages.

    City names I have include Urgul, Gnostra, Nornolost, Gorgofell, Traed, Celic Goch, Tem Goch, Mordra, Dargul, Panowa, Enpallan, Memer, Rownon, Aprila, Gaelon and Dwylo. It is important to give them distinctive sounds so they don’t get muddled up by the reader. Within these cities I do use more traditional names like Salt Ash District, Dedam Flats, Guttal Cross and Hunnar Groves.

    They are small details within a story but they can add something special to the tone and atmosphere if used well. Such things also offer up chances to tie in historical references (names of old leaders, wars, inventors, explorers or mythos). Little details in and of them selves are not important, but if they lie together they can do quite a lot of work for you.

    I’m suggesting a detailed backstory for every named place, just that it is worth considering tying a place name in to something mentioned within the story - all readers enjoy piecing together the patchwork you lay out (it’s human nature).
     
  7. AbyssalJoey

    AbyssalJoey Active Member

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    I like to use your method but instead of sticking to english I tend to create words (or borrow from other languages) and either leave them alone or mix them with different languages (depending on the geographical location of whatever I'm naming) and make it so that those words were the previous name of the place; my favorite place name I've created is "Ealuran Bridge" the name is divided into:

    .- Ealur (River)
    .- An (Bridge)
    .- Bridge

    And, of course, this town is on both sides of the "Ealur River".

    This is something somewhat common in history, the idea being that over time language changes and what used to be a simple description of the area is now considered a name and people just add a description of the area to this name, sometimes the exactly same thing that the old name used to represent (tautological names), they can be simple like Sahara/Gobi Desert (desert desert) to more ridiculous ones like Breedon on the Hill (hill hill on the hill) or even New York Bay (York descends from jorvik and vik used to mean cove or bay). This happens a lot because invasions were fun.

    You can also use the name of "the" guy that founded the place (probably a single house at the beginning), for example, using spanish as a base let's say that a guy named Eduardo has a farm, the land is really good and there is way more than he knows what to do with, so a friend of his builds a house next to his and then another friend builds another house somewhat nearby and so forth and so on, but because this was originally Eduardos farm everyone refers to it as such, but to be honest Eduardo is kinda long so instead everyone uses Lalo (diminutive) so this new hamlet is "La Granja de Lalo" and over time this becomes "Granja Lalo" and then an english speaking country invades and they think that the name is ok but it's not really descriptive, so they stick together the original name and add farm thus becoming "Granjalalo Farm" or "Lalos farm farm"; you can also probably cut a letter or two and end up with "Granjlalo" or "Granalalo" or maybe "Granlalo" (this would mean Great Lalo).

    Another thing to consider is that on top of using names, geography or weather you can also use animals; here in México there is a state called "Guanajuato" originally named "Quanashuato" (Quanas = Frogs and Huato = Hill).

    Honestly, worldbuilding can be so simple and yet so goddamned complex, it's horrible, I love it.

    P.S: I apologize for the walls of text.
     
  8. badgerjelly

    badgerjelly Contributor Contributor

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    A fun thing to do is this .... hsdfkhuoso ... then try and and make something out of the mess by throwing in some vowels, hyphens and spaces.

    Hosad Frenklah Household, Hsid-fekha or Shadfelk-u-Oso.

    Even the way words look on the page matter to me. Names like Chervina de Massine are a bit of mouthful and look too ‘French’ where Cerv Maasin will stick out rather than fade into the background as some ‘French sounding name’. Remember that reading is a double-medium, the reader will notice the sound in their head and/or the shape of the word on the page. Ordering vowels in an unusual manner is a particularly good idea for more ‘alien’ creatures, like uo, ae, or ioi.

    Maybe I think too much about these things sometimes :D grammatical structures and their inflections have always fascinated me. I used to make up hundreds of maps and names as a kid - was always happy playing in my own head rather than outside in the sun.

    If you are interested in going more heavily into your language then I HIGHLY recommend teaching it to someone else. When you start teaching to people with completely different languages you are asked questions you’d have never thought of asking before ... I’ve not lived in an English speaking country for around 8 years now and I still come across questions about English where I also ask “Why do I say that? It sounds crazy!”
     
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  9. halisme

    halisme Contributor Contributor

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    For me there are two different methods that I use, depending on if I want the name in English, or to sound like it's in a fantasy dialect. The first is pretty similar to your "name after appearance" system, but I also add things like features or history, and then try to shorten the name or alter some of the sounds to malform it a bit. E.G Cladder's Pit could be a mine. Cladder's Pit would likely become Cladpit over time., and may become Clapit if given a bit longer.
    For more overt fantasy names, I tend to write out a few different sounds that I think fit the tone of the culture I want in that area, and then start arranging them in different ways. E.G, if I want some graceful sounding elves I might go for Es, El, Oeth, Wen, Arn, and Dor. And I'd mash those together till I found names I like:
    Eloeth
    Arndor
    Doroeth
    Wenel
    Eldor.
     
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  10. Stormsong07

    Stormsong07 Contributor Contributor

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    For my current WIP, I used a method very similar to what you described, @GirlWriter101 . My fantasy world is heavily based on medieval England, so I stuck with very English names. I made 2 lists. One contained every type of place name I could think of. (Farm, Valley, Mount, Rest, Home, Hall, Port, Field, Town, Hold, Fell, Fort, Isle, etc, etc.) Then I made a list of other, somewhat fantasy-ish, names I likes. (Star, Storm, Dragon, Gryphon, whatever). Then I combined them to get place names like Wanderport, Stormbreaker Isle, Mirfield, Easthaven, Maris Fork, Gryphon's Rest, Thorncliff, and such.
     
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  11. GirlWriter101

    GirlWriter101 Banned

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    Basically what I do, it also sounds like you have your hands on GRRM's place generator.

    Also, please don't uses my username in posts, call me whenever you want, but it makes my gender dysphoria worse.
     
  12. GirlWriter101

    GirlWriter101 Banned

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    This is actually a really good idea, I had never thought of using words in other languages before...
     
  13. OurJud

    OurJud Contributor Contributor

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    Not fantasy, but whenever I’ve needed fictious place names I just use an online generator. There are hundreds of the things out there, most with a single button which generates names indefinitely until you see one you like the sound of.

    Just search ‘fantasy name generator ‘
     
  14. IHaveNoName

    IHaveNoName Senior Member Community Volunteer

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    This, but I base my nations on an archetype - for instance, one group is India/Pakistan/Nepal, another is African nations, etc. Thus, you get names that are more or less random, but still evince the feel of a distinct culture, making them more unique. This site has all kinds of name gens from all over the world.
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2019
  15. Kalisto

    Kalisto Senior Member

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    For me I'm lucky. I speak both English and German and my stories take place in a fantasy world inspired by 13th to 15th century Europe that helps with naming things. But even so, there's nothing wrong with dabbling a little in a foreign language to help name things. Because different cultures have different attitudes about how things should be named.
     
  16. Nellie Mea Dixon

    Nellie Mea Dixon New Member

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    I work with a theme. I chose India, the middle east, and to a lesser extent, Africa for my primary inspiration. I looked at names of people places and things. Read some books about the languages from those regions. When I come up with a name I compare it to the rest of the cast or other settings I've already created. I say it out loud in a sentence to see how it flows. I even use some text to speech to hear someone else say it with varying accents. I use fantasy name generators for inspiration and mix and match until I find a combination that feels right. I have a few rules to avoid making things super hard to pronounce (Like a name with a ton of consonants or littered with apostrophes-just a personal preference :rolleyes: ) or too similar to RL things that would totally distract from what I'm trying to accomplish.
     
  17. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    In my current piece, I did the following:

    Sepilon is a future country on the continent of Australia. The inhabitants of Sepilon descend from USAians and Canadians.

    Using the Slavic-Germanic example as my conceptual source, I used the Australian rhyming slang pejorative for Americans, seppos, as my etymological source for the name of the country. In the forming of the exonym for Germanic people, the Slavic languages, as a whole, make use of a word-root that means mute, unspeaking, dumb. Not very flattering, but as far as the history for the word they use to call their neighbors, it’s a known known.

    From Wikipedia (but learned at the DLIFLC):

    The Slavic exonym nemets, nemtsy derives from Proto-Slavic němьcь, pl. němьci, 'the mutes', 'not able (to speak)' (from adjective němъ 'mute' and suffix -ьcь).[15] It literally means a mute and can be also associated with similar sounding not able, without power, but came to signify those who can't speak (like us); foreigners. The Slavic autonym (Proto-Slavic *Slověninъ) likely derives from slovo, meaning word. According to a theory, early Slavs would call themselves the speaking people or the keepers of the words, as opposed to their Germanic neighbors, the mutes (a similar idea lies behind Greek barbaros, barbarian and Arab عجم (ajam), mute).

    So, though seppo may seem like a crap way to arrive at a demonym, there is strong precedent, first as an exonym, later as a demonym through the process of linguistic reclamation / resignification.
     
    Last edited: Feb 21, 2020
  18. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    my world is inspired by celtic mythology (mixed with some norse and saxon) one side of the frontier and the roman empire to the other... on the 'celtic' side i've used mainly duns and bergs (yeah I know berg is norse) so for example the hero is Aidan Darces, so his family home is Darcesberg... on the 'roman' side things are mostly named after past emperors and such
     
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