So I'm writing a fantasy and I need help coming up with names of places. I already have Erenthia and Laurdia. Any other ideas?
I think we'd need a little more information about each place for which you need a name if we are to help you. Currently we don't know anything about the locations you're talking about. Are they countries, cities, islands? When is the story talking place. There are a lot of things that might affect how a place is named. On another note, you can also check out websites like Seventh Sanctum that provide name generators to easily get lists of randomly generated names from which you can pick names you like and use or combine as you please.
Well one place is an island and grows a lot of citrus. Another has had a history of being at war with a ruthless king who tormented the kingdom for generations. Once the king passed an they got on their feet, they sought revenge on the king's grandchildren and great grandchild. The other ones basically are just names for places that visiting suitors are from. Oh and I almost forgot! The last one is ruled by a king and queen who think masculinity is defined by much you can kill. Their son wound up liking art and picking flowers so they threw him in this arena with wild hungry wolves demanding him to fight but he had to be pulled out before he was maimed to death. His trainer toughened him up and three years later he came back in the arena and ripped the wolves to pieces with his bare hands. So that's a bit about that....
If you're ever having trouble thinking up names for the places you're creating, think of the characteristics of the place you want to name, from geography to the culture of the people who live there. I.E. Let's say the citrus island is most famous for their oranges. If the world you're building is one where simple English names will still fly such as in Game of Thrones (it has "Valeria" and "Volantis," but also "Kings Landing," and "Flea bottom") than you could go with a name a simple as "Orange Island." If you want to get more creative though, we can turn to etymology for help. The word for the orange fruit in most languages are variants either on Sanskrit "Naranga" or Greek "Portokali," so you can make a portmanteau of the words and come up with names such as "Na'por Island" with its major city being "Narankali," or "Port Kalinar."
Those are good names. As long the names you come up with aren't a string of constants, or something else incredibly difficult to pronounce, you should be good. Now try to assign the names you have to the possible kingdoms you want to write about. To help you develop your world you can then create some basic profiles for each of your new places. Don't worry about getting all the details now though, much of it will change as you continue writing. You also don't need to stress on coming up with all your names right now. Obviously your countries and kingdoms will have more than one city, town, river, etc, as well as border other places you have named yet. However if the main character is never going to these place and they don't have any role in the central plot you can always name them later or not name them at all. Hope that helps you out some, let me know if you need any other advice
