Thanks for taking the time on this. So far I've made the following at your suggestion:

Nordifying the North (as noted, Bath and points south are really "Central" despite geographic location):
Oarsberg -> Utland. The former wasn't really sensible to begin with, the latter ("outlying area") sticks to Nordic roots.
Wintersgaard -> Vintersgaard.
Oxenholm -> Oxholm. The plural in Nordic would be "Okser", and I don't like the look/sound of that so I went with the singular to keep it to its roots.

Romancing the South:
Dog's End -> Contracanis
Fort Briar -> Castravespis? I'm unhappy here. May punt on the original name and just go with something Latin. Or maybe this is an exception.
River's End -> Fons Alta ("High spring/source")
Hermitage -> Peregrinus (pilgrim/traveller)
Pine Harbor -> Porta Robura (Oak port)

Other (just doofus names to begin with)
Lochsberg -> Portishead
Cupsberg -> Broadkirk



Quote Originally Posted by Jalyha View Post

I think I wasn't clear. (Probably because I was sleepy!) I didn't mean that the names of all those places would change. I meant that someone from another language would CALL them differently. People are, by nature, lazy (with words, at least).

They're going to simplify names that are easily translated, or use words that make more sense to them.

Recently, when being lazy with other cultures became politically incorrect, that changed, but like...


I don't know how technical I can go with this, but I'd like to be accurate. What I'm talking about are called "exonyms" which were very common, more so, until recently.

That is: Names with a similar sound and meaning, have translations in foreign languages *automatically* that are NOT used in the place being named.
Yes, English has Moscow for Muscovy, Vienna for Vien, Prague for Praha...

What you are talking about are endonyms - The local or common names for places.


My point is that an early cartographer would either use the endonyms (one of the last things to change) OR the exonyms (one of the first things to change - often before there's ever a dispute)... not both.
Ahh, yes, I think this is the source of some of our disagreement. To me, calling places in the south or north by English names is incorrect use of exonyms unless those places were colonized by the central folk for a prolonged period of time (see: Cumbria). That I want to eliminate for sure.

But the central is messy and has been ruled by different regimes through the centuries and has different cultures living there; the endonyms are going to have different backgrounds.

2) Italy - these are not oddities, and they are not exonyms. These are languages which all have the same ORIGIN, and that is how the names are derived from so many places so easily.

It's not like the difference between Norwegian and Scottish... it's like the difference between English and American English. They're derived from the same place, most of the root words are the same.
This isn't exactly right. Those languages don't really have the same origin, except in the sense that they're all Indo-European: Norwegian and English, both being Germanic languages, are more closely related than Etruscan or Oscan (let alone Greek) are to Latin (or Italian or French or Provencal or whatever Romance language).

Etruscan predates Latin and died out around the 1st century AD; its closest relatives are Tyrsenian and Raetic--it's not even in the broad "Italic" family, let alone a Romance language or dialect of Italian. Oscan and Umbrian are Italic but not Latin/Romance languages which also died out between 100BC and 100AD; they are distantly related to Latin in the way that German and English are distantly related).

Sample of Oscan text, transliterated into our alphabet: "ekkum svaí píd herieset/trííbarak avúm tereí púd/liímítúm pernúm púís/herekleís fíísnú mefiíst".
Sample Etruscan: "pe raścemulml escul, zuci en esci epl, tularu. Auleśi, Velθina-ś Arznal, clenśi,"

The point in bringing them up is that place names are "sticky": even long-dead languages like this survive in place names. For some dead languages, toponyms are the only (or at least primary) place that they're attested, in fact.

3) America is an atypical example of *anything*.
Agreed, I brought it up as a counterpoint to older countries to show that even young countries who had a chance to name everything recently still have plenty of linguistic variation. But it's not really relevant.

So ... take minneapolis, for example - in that region (Minnesota, which is, by itself, bigger than all of England) you'll still find a *majority* of germanic and native-american names, with some latin thrown in in later years.

In the Virginia area, you'll find MOSTLY English and native american names, with some latin thrown in in later years.
Agreed, but you'll also find a minority of French and Spanish and German Swedish and whatever other names all over. Which is what I'm getting at in the central region: it should be MOSTLY Anglo/English style names, but making everything English/Anglo seems way too clean and neat to be true--it's the sort of thing you'd only find in a designed/fictional world. You need some messiness because things evolved haphazardly, they weren't designed from the ground up.

Fact is... if you want the names, you should keep them. It's possible... might even be plausible, there's nothing wrong with them.. but you asked for discussion and this is a bit of an obsession for me, so....
I'm enjoying your comments, I don't want you to think I'm rejecting anything without considering them (see: the passel of cities I've already renamed at your suggestion!) and even when I don't necessarily agree I think you're raising interesting points that make me think. Thanks very much!