Japanese Place-Naming

[ScriptKitty]

I noticed some of your work on the board, GP! I look forward to seeing more. I'm glad that these resources can be of some assistance.

I've been working on a book as well, in a fictional Japan-inspired setting of my own creation named Asajima (instead of the land of the rising sun, 'dawn island'! Ha ha! Ha... haaa.... *crickets*). I'm hoping to publish it later on this year, though my worldmap was created before I had any real idea of scale, travel times and distances, natural geological features, etc. Now that I've learned so much from this site, I want to redesign the map before I send the book off to the printers, since it's the map I plan to base all of my future works in. Once I rebuild the map, I'm hoping to be able to post it here on Cartographer's Guild.

In the meantime, I've been working on a map for a Japan-modified D&D game, and I'm hoping to post the map and some accompanying material on the forum some time in the next few days. I'm shooting for a setting with a lot of classical D&D elements (all of the major 3.5 races represented), but in a cultural setting similar to the one I've cobbled together for Asajima (the courts and nobility have a very Heian period feel, the world in general has a lot of sengoku jidai influences from before the arrival of foreigners, a few post-Meiji elements like the modern image of geisha as entertainers, etc).

[ScriptKitty]

More place-naming goodness! I learned some neat stuff while naming my map for my T&T project (Tsuchirou to Tatsu, trans: Dungeons and Dragons )

Directional names are incredibly useful.
Central = Chuuou or Naka-
East = Higashi, Tou
West = Nishi
North = Kita, Hoku
South = Minami

Now here's where things get really fun. The emperor supposedly sits facing south, so the terms "u" (right) and "sa" (left) can be used for placenames. In my map, there are two capes extending south on either side of the bay where my capitol city is. I've named them respectively Sasaki (left cape) for the eastern cape, and Usaki (right cape) for the western cape. Mind you, the kanji are what give them these great meanings... Sasaki could also be written with different kanji to be the word for a type of tree.


Another favorite of place-naming has always been 'New'. 'New York', 'New Jersey', 'New Mexico', it's a great way to name a place without having to be, y'know, creative. Well, Japan has a couple of its own... Shin can mean new, while Hon or Moto can mean original. For example, I have two provinces, and one holds the current royal palace (miya), one is where the old palace was. I named them, respectively, Shinmiya and Honmiya.


Hopefully this helps, I'm planning on putting something together for character naming soon too.