Toponomy, or How to Name Places!

[Avalanche]

Though I don't usually do maps (maps, not even once?), I do need to come up with names for geographical locations in my short stories. I actually find it harder to come up with names for modern non-fantasy fiction names (think more Lovecraftian geographical locations), than with fantasy ones.

For the fantasy ones, I usually go with the standard naming conventions that the OP discusses. However, I do consider the fact that usually a location has several different names for different cultural groups. I also like to give the names a twist by using historical forms of the words, or even other languages, to craft the toponyms.

For example, one of my settings includes the names "Abeenben", "Cambuscoile" and "Smirrhaughs", derived from Scots or Scottish English; it includes "Midsburns" - middle stream, and "Corbie River" - Crow River. There is also a settlement "Corbietràigh" - Mouth of the Crow. However, all of these names are given by the newly settled population, and there is a name that sticks out - "Guruk", clearly a non-Germanic name, that actually comes from Turkis, and in-universe is borrowed by the native tribes.

Also for such a setting I see no reason not to name your locations in an unpleasant way, given that it is a place generally avoided by the population. For example, in the same setting I used "The Droch Bog" for the swamps where the natives live. "Peak Doomy Doom" might be too cheeky, but with a general linguistic twist - like Dømmetopp (Norwegian), Vegzetart (derived from Hungarian), or Gibelpik (derived from Russian), is good, and provides a good genius bonus.

[Josey Wales]

About strange name, in Rome (Italy) we have places called:
torre spaccata = broken tower
torre gaia = cheerful tower
tor de cenci = rags' tower
tor tre teste = three heads tower
tor de schiavi = slaves' tower
tor bella monaca = beautiful nun's tower
tor carbone = coal tower
torrino = small tower
tor di quinto = quinto's tower
torre in pietra = stone tower
tor pagnotta = loaf tower

Look: none of these places has a tower

[jturner]

I'm with Avalanche - why waste time being creative when the real world has so much fantastic inspiration?

When I create a fantasy or sci-fi world, I make a list of prefixes and suffixes along a theme. For example, my current project has a country whose language and culture is inspired by Welsh. So, looking at a map of Wales, I make a list of prefixes that sound nice, like...

Caer
Aber
Llan
Rhad
Ystal

...and some suffixes...

ymney
avenny
aron
leth
wy

...and maybe a few extra syllables to throw in the middle...

yn
ein
drin

...then I put them into Excel and use that as the basis for a random name generator. So, you get Aberymney, Llandrinaron, Rhadynleth, Caeravenny, and so on. I've noticed that, in general, big cities tend to have shorter names than small villages, so I might cut some down to Ravenny or Andrinon or Rhynleth. They're probably nonsense in the Welsh language, but if your intended audience doesn't know, then who cares, right?

You don't need too many word-pieces before you get a name generator with hundreds of permutations, but which have a kind of cohesion. And don't forget multi-word names, with the equivalent of "Port X" or "X's Landing" or "Mos X" (of Star Wars infamy).

My first language is English, and to my ears countries like Armenia, Pakistan and Finland have beautiful place names. I think you just need to open an atlas and be shameless in your exploitation.

[Mistindantacles]

Not to necro an older thread - but what a great topic!

Having made too many D&D adventures to bother counting them - mostly homebrrew - this topic was of particular interest.

Like some others, I employ a convention to base names - characters, places, and landscapes - on other real world languages. In addition to modern languages (mostly European), I'll delve into older, even extinct, languages as well: Latin, Greek, Old/Middle English being the most common exmaples. I've even used Aramaic, various North American Indian tribal languages, and old Norse.

But I use these as a starting point only. The internet is a wonderful thing (for example: it brought me here, to all you fine folks); it makes it easy to find translations from English to these other languages. From there, I can begin to meld words or parts of words together to fit the particular linguistics that I am looking for.

So that's what I do.

Like I said: what a great topic!

[Facubaci]

In Argentina we have a lot of native names, specially in the north like my own city, Gualeguaychú, a mix of "yaguarí guazú" that means "river of big jaguar".
For me, they aren't cool as english names, such as Peterborough or Stratford-upon-Avon haha.

[vaiyt]

@Facubaci "yaguari guazú" sounds like it's Guarany, or at least related. It's one of my favorite languages =)

Here there's a whole lot of place names mixing native and African languages (though adapted, sometimes clumsily, to European spelling). My own neighborhood is named Pituba, which is a Tupy portmanteau meaning "Sea spray". Extremely appropriate, given that the salty breeze is a constant source of damage to my PCs.
Other native names from around me:
Abaeté (sinister - it's named after a lagoon with very dark waters)
Itapuã (alt. itapoan - rumbling stone - named after the noise made by the wind on the stones by the beach)
Itaigara (stone canoe - no idea why)
Paripe (lit. "at the pari", which was a wooden causeway used for fishing)
Pituaçu (big prawn - specifically a freshwater prawn native to the region, which is about the size of a large craw/y/fish/dad and ridiculously delicious)
Pirajá (full of fish - well, there is a lake nearby, so...)
Pernambués (from "a sea apart" or more literally "a big honking pond")
Periperi (a species of rush)
African names:
Ogunjá (a reference to Ogun, god of war and iron, making him a god of tools and all technology by extension. Pretty cool if you ask me. Wish more fantasy worlds took inspiration from Fon and Yoruba deities, but I digress)
Beiru (from Gbeiru, a slave that eventually inherited the farm where the neighborhood is now located)
Bonocô (from Baba Igunnuko, entity whose ritual used to be performed there)
Cabula (from kabula, music played by the slaves who were the main inhabitants of the area)

I also like to mix elements of two languages into something unrecognizable (aka the Star Wars method), or mix two "easy" methods of making names to create a more complex one (like make a cypher of a language then revert the word sounds).

[ChickPea]

I'm in Scotland and you come across Gaelic names fairly often here, even though only a tiny percentage of the population speak the language. However, Gaelic place names have a fantastic, other-wordly feel to them, and I wanted to use them in my maps. While researching, I stumbled across a page on the Ordnance Survey web site (the UK's official mapping agency) which gives root words and their meanings for Gaelic, Welsh and Scandinavian words:

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/reso...lacenames.html

If you click on the language you want to research, then click where it says 'A Glossary of [language name] elements', you get root words and their meanings and you can come up with some great names by combining words.

Not sure if many of you are already familiar with that Ordnance Survey page, as I'm pretty new to Cartographer's Guild, but thought I'd put it out there anyway as someone might find it useful.

[Kiba]

I love toponymy! Conlangs are great because I love coming up with conlangs that aren't ripoff Elvish like most post-Tolkien writers, but that just gets me lost in worldbuilding too much. Therefore, I go the George RR Martin method of "naming things in English, but evoking the feel of the region." Highgarden, the Red Keep, Winterfell, Storm's End, King's Landing, Casterly Rock--I love how those names immediately hit you in the weird little corners of your head.

For my urban-fantasy Moonflowers, I'd like to translate all the place-names into Irish Gaelic once I'm done, but so far I've just got a few names solidly locked down.

Cloncarrig (Stonemeadow) is a mortal town near the Cliffs of Moher, a few minutes away from real-life Ireland's Doolin. It's a very small tourist town constantly beset by the Fair Folk, and where the setting of the story is.

The Hawthorn Fort is a fairy-castle that my female protagonist inherits after her father kills the king in her defense. It's the seat of the Kingdom Under the Hills, a petty-kingdom in the northeast of Fairy-Ireland. Since the Fair Folk in Irish lore are said to live in fairy-hills (probably tombs or the remnants of hill-forts, according to archaeology), I wanted something that gave the feel of a strange unknown part of the world. (And indeed, it's not part of the physical world, but the Otherworld.) In Gaelic it would probably be "(an) Tir Faoi na Sidhe," "the land under the fairy-mounds."

In Irish, "Hawthorn Fort" is apparently "Dun Ske," which is disappointing because it's just so short. I love how "the Hawthorn Fort" sounds in English. A fort named for thorn-covered trees? Not a nice image. In Irish folklore, the hawthorn is a tree sacred to fairies--if you cut down a hawthorn tree, fairies will punish you and it will not be pretty. However, it's also a very important tree in hedgerows, which I found interesting.

I love the imagery of the masses of white flowers on dark thorny wood, so I thought up a castle built around a hawthorn maze. It's not supposed to be a pretty castle--impressive, yes, but pretty? Again, because the Fair Folk are seen as strange and ineffable in folklore, I wanted a castle that was strange-looking and primal. I made the complex consist of a bunch of massive towers and drystone walls built around an enchanted maze. The map I thought up is in the "Building/Structure map" forum.

Breachwood / Ballybegrosh is the Fair Folk village attached to the Hawthorn Fort. It's one of the few sizable breaks in the area's massive forest, the Timberdeep. I borrowed a teensy bit from George RR Martin's "Dothraki Sea," where it's not a literal sea, but the expanse of plains are so easy to get lost in that it's essentially the same thing. Where would you have enough trees for a hedge maze? A forest, duh. And the main forest in the Kingdom Under the Hills is called "the Timberdeep."

The Timberdeep's tentative Gaelic translation is "An Muir ag Coill," "the Sea of Wood," but I think it's too pretty-sounding and poetic. Like the Hawthorn Fort, I named my forest "the Timberdeep" because this is not a place to frolic around in: The Timberdeep "drowns" would-be invaders due to getting them lost in the trees, starving them out, or getting them lost and THEN starving them. If I can find an Irish translation of "Timberdeep" that's shorter and harsher-sounding, I'll use it.

The only major road in the northern half of the Kingdom Under the Hills is the Maygeld Road. "May" is another name for "hawthorn," and "geld" comes from Germanic for "money." The Maygeld has several toll-areas, so "hawthorn toll" becomes "hawthorn geld" becomes "maygeld." A pretty basic "named for its purpose" situation.

[Arawn]

I have made up an own language, but don't stick to it fully. I decided to make things universal in language by choosing a non-existing language as base. I myself don't speak Dutch and found Dutch too dull a language to use. English sounds much more dramatic, but then again I feared for the time whenever someone would try to translate names. I also didn't think it very honest to use English names. So, some examples: Caesléan is castle, móin is moorland, so a castle by the moors can be called Caesmóin.. Same for Car which is tooth or pinnacle or tower and Reach, sea, becomes Cair Reach: tower by the sea.

[ladiestorm]

hey ChickPea... you and I sort of have something in common! my father is a first generation American, from Scotland. My father's family originated above Inverness. My first word was actually in gaelic... according to both my parents. Gaelic was my first language... but I'll be hanged if I remember much of it now!

This is a really cool discussion! May I add my two cents worth? I just completed(and posted) my first local map, of the starting home base village for my Larysia Campaign. Larysia btw... is a take on my gaelic/celtic heritage. I'm part of the Cambell McLeod clan... and the Laery clan. Larysia is a changing of the name of Laery.

Anyway.. my player homebase... is the little village of Ardenvale. Now Arden is one of the cetic translations for the gaelic word river. And a vale, if memory serves, is a small pocket valley filled with trees. My village is in a little valley on the edge of my Wilderune Forest, and is nestled against the River Arden. Hence Ardenvale, literally means valley at the river. And my Wilderune Forest, is so named because of the wild magic that permeates it.

And in my Aeterna map(so named because the inhabitants are gods therefor immortal- not yet posted) there is a mountain range called the Dragonspire Mountains... because the peninsula they start in looks somewhat like a dragon's head, and the mountain range has the feel of the bony ridge down a dragon's back....