Trouble with names - Would love a hand.

[waldronate]

Call it "New York" or "Los Angeles" or "San Francisco" or "Mi Ami" or "Port Land" or "Charles Town". That way it's two words that aren't put together at all. One classic technique is to do the rudiments of conlang activity and define words for a few basic colors and things and titles; combining these gives good place names that are unfamiliar. For example, naming a place "The Watch Tower" and then defining the words "Watch" and "Tower" as "Minas" and "Tirith" gives a place name with a straightforward translation. Similarly, "The Blue Mountains" could be translated as "Ered Luin". Straighforward stuff and it lets you pull place names right off a map or even use really dull names like "Rocky Mountains", "Smoky Mountains", and "Snowy Sawtoothed Mountains" (that last one is a rough translation of "Sierra Nevada").

There are any number of word generators out there on the Internet. Generate a few dozen words, associate them with English cognates and start generating noun-adjective, adjective-noun, adjective-verb (and others) pairs to get good place names.

Good starting points:
Colors (red, blue, green, white, black, silver, gold)
Sizes (big, small, giant, tiny)
Geography (hill, mountains, cliff, coast, valley, canyon, river lake, ocean).
Weather (sunny, rainy, snowy)
People Places (hamlet, village, town, city, tower, fort)
Activities (farm, guard, watch, mine, swim, fall)
Age (new, old, ancient)
and so on.

Keeping a table of several different language sets as above for different previous cultures can give a good feel to a world because areas will be roughly consistent and you can layer elements over time as the cultures change (if you're into that much detail).

[lokiie1984]

Call it "New York" or "Los Angeles" or "San Francisco" or "Mi Ami" or "Port Land" or "Charles Town". That way it's two words that aren't put together at all. One classic technique is to do the rudiments of conlang activity and define words for a few basic colors and things and titles; combining these gives good place names that are unfamiliar. For example, naming a place "The Watch Tower" and then defining the words "Watch" and "Tower" as "Minas" and "Tirith" gives a place name with a straightforward translation. Similarly, "The Blue Mountains" could be translated as "Ered Luin". Straighforward stuff and it lets you pull place names right off a map or even use really dull names like "Rocky Mountains", "Smoky Mountains", and "Snowy Sawtoothed Mountains" (that last one is a rough translation of "Sierra Nevada").

There are any number of word generators out there on the Internet. Generate a few dozen words, associate them with English cognates and start generating noun-adjective, adjective-noun, adjective-verb (and others) pairs to get good place names.

Good starting points:
Colors (red, blue, green, white, black, silver, gold)
Sizes (big, small, giant, tiny)
Geography (hill, mountains, cliff, coast, valley, canyon, river lake, ocean).
Weather (sunny, rainy, snowy)
People Places (hamlet, village, town, city, tower, fort)
Activities (farm, guard, watch, mine, swim, fall)
Age (new, old, ancient)
and so on.

Keeping a table of several different language sets as above for different previous cultures can give a good feel to a world because areas will be roughly consistent and you can layer elements over time as the cultures change (if you're into that much detail).

Thats a really handy idea, i will keep that in mind. I think the Dunroch we came up with has something long those lines, i cant recall if it was old english or something else but i remember her saying something about hill rock. In alot of games that i play online i use a similar setup, taking words that describe the class and then popping it into a language translator until i find something i like the sound of. Not sure why it never really occurred to me to do that for the city name too.

I still have at least two more cities to name (a semi tourist spot built into a desert canyon and then a tiny farming community) So i think i will definitely make use of your idea.

[waldronate]

I still have at least two more cities to name (a semi tourist spot built into a desert canyon and then a tiny farming community) So i think i will definitely make use of your idea.

Foreign Traveler Valley and Good Small Farmers? So Tourivale (tourist vale) and Bontipeyizan (translate.google.com claims this as a literal translation of "good small farmer" from english into haitian creole with spaces removed). I forgot to mention the googly translator - it has lots of fun results ("dry land farmers" in english is shown as "kuival maal põllumajandustootjate" in Estonian - perhaps too long for a tiny village name).

[Lukc]

Foreign Traveler Valley and Good Small Farmers? So Tourivale (tourist vale) and Bontipeyizan (translate.google.com claims this as a literal translation of "good small farmer" from english into haitian creole with spaces removed). I forgot to mention the googly translator - it has lots of fun results ("dry land farmers" in english is shown as "kuival maal põllumajandustootjate" in Estonian - perhaps too long for a tiny village name).

Actually, a simple trick is to take your translation, change the orthography (the way sounds are spelled) and mush it around a bit, so that it's shorter & faster to pronounce, and voila ... a colloquial name that developed from an older, more formal name.

E.g. "Great Tree Hill" --google translate into Welsh--> "mawr coeden bryn" (no idea how to pronounce that, but let's pretend ...) --I fiddle a bit and--> Mor Coodryn or Coedenry Maur or Mawer Coebryn or even Marcobreen.

E.g. 2 "fat cake wood" --to Danish--> "fedt kage træ" --fiddle--> Fedka Trae or Fettage Tre or Trefedage or Feid Kagatra

[Jhormogan]

My friends are astounded by how many names I've made up to be scattered across my maps. But nonetheless, my names are inspired by things around me. For awhile I used to go to a nearby park after school and find road signs and mash words together. It was interesting due to the fact that the west side of the city had a French background whereas the east side had hints of Polish in it. Also this was during my time taking Latin. I suppose with all the available resources I could change to not making names up in my head, but if you are still capable of doing so it's something to be proud of because I certainly am!

Something I usually fall to for a region of similar cultures are names with similar sounds in them, say Ayntvayle (Ant-vale). Next city for me would be Aynaetell (Anay-tell). Similar prefixes or suffixes usually work for like regions or entire states/countries!