Quote Originally Posted by waldronate View Post
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.