How do you name your World? (Or nations, etc., for that matter...)

[Highlieche]

Most of my naming conventions are simple. I take the focus of the map/TL/fantasy and find what i think sounds cool to name it as.

[jaspertjie]

I sometimes use words that actually mean anything, like Dostre'dex. Dostre means 'Vessel' and 'dex' means city. Reminder: 'dex' is only thrown at the end of a placename if the city is conquered, not when founded by Maraxxians. If that is the case, then you leave the 'dex' away, or delete the apostrophe before 'dex'.

[Vorhees]

For my Fantasy world i Keep the World Name Short as Possible , the Kingdom's and And Cities i give a name That Captures the feel i am trying to get , So for instance i have a Region Called Spargos , It has a Greek Feel and is Inhabited by Minotaurs and Humans, i also have a Region Called Jarlgarr that has a Nordic Feel. When i am doing my future World i Usually name things after current or historical places or Events as in New Scotland, Camelot and Fort Apache.

When doing a lot of places i find that this site http://donjon.bin.sh/name/ helps alot

This one can come in handy at times. http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

[Yorick Sofer]

I actually have this same problem.
Trying to think of why your name would be called that.
I'll see some maps with very strange names. Names that look like people names.
Names come difficult to me, and naming the entire world is the hardest one.
There being so many gods on some hands, it would be difficult to have one all encompassing god to name the world after.

[Vanoitran]

Naming usually comes last for me, its often based on what I want the land to represent (read: what is in the land) and if I can't think of anything personalized, I will take a Tolkein-y move and mesh languages (right now Im on a Mongolian-German mesh).

For example:

Land's economy is fishing based: The towns might be named something like Teem, Rot's Cove, Sailorhill or something generally fishing and nautical based. While the region may have a more creative name based on an imagined history.

or

Islands of the Land's shore are being invaded by demons from another realm -- the landmarks in that area will have names based off the demon's language (here it might be good to mesh languages) while the lands around those islands will tell about their nature of always defending against hordes of demons. Such as: Rykyan's Bastion, or The Walled Coast, or Fleetguard.

[tabletopbitsandbobs]

I will sometimes take a word from the plot. Like Betrayal, or Brother....whatever is involved in the main plot for the world and throw it through Google Translate. See what pops up and see if anything sounds good. Oh! A tip...Say the names you come up with out loud., you never know how your players will make fun of your names until you hear it.

[NonnieW-A40]

I just created a couple of names, after a name generator didn't have anything which peaked my interest. At first, it was Farnia, but because it was only one letter from a popular movie, I eventually named it Interraton.

[NeonKnight]

No Prob.....Hmmmm....Nations, how did I name them.

Well, for my Clindenese peoples I first took what they were to mimic in the real world. Having them based off of the Orient in Our world, I had no interest in recreating China nor Japan (both being done a lot in my opinion), but instead basing it off something that truly had my attention, Korea. My Wife being Korean meant I obviously spent a lot of time visiting Korea and learning some of it culture. I noticed that almost every single place name in Korea is a two syllable word.

Seoul - So-Ul
Pusan - Pu-San
Chegu - Che-Gu

Now, I know Korea is actually 3 Syllable Kor-E-A, but that is a bit of a misnomer from the Arabic trader who first encounter one of the old 3-Kingdoms that made up the Korean Peninsula, Of which Goguryeo, was later shortened to Goryeo The G being a hard-G almost K sound), so was anglised to Korea. Modern Koreans do not call their country Korea, but instead it is called Han-guk in the South (South Korean) and Choson in the North. Sadly, this is where we get the derogatory slang term for Koreans as Gooks.

So, that history aside, I set about naming the cities, towns, countries of the Clindense areas with two-syllable names on the island of Kosqra: Chin-Hyea, Kae-Din, Orgon, Tan-na, and Shin-Po. While some of the cities still have their old (old meaning when I first creating the area in my Teens, like Dange St Mansini, it would likely have been changed if I continued with my old world.

Now, goig back to my other article (the one moreso with place names), it applied ont he whole to Nations in part. I often took normal names, and changed them slightly to make the new national names.

Bacose - Because
Brighton - Started as simply Bright Empire, but as I got older, felt kinda wrong
Island Kingdom - Islanith

Other than that, the world for me is older than most of my gaming friends :O and as a result, I have a hard time remeber how I cam about naming some of the areas.

[altasilvapuer]

For me, when I named Geidor and other similar ones which I haven't yet mapped, I was in the middle of creating backstory-esque details about a sci-fi universe, and kept trying to keep successive names somewhat consistent with existing names in the same language/culture/etc. The first couple were pretty much thrown on by feel, and I've mostly let the 'rules' (term used lightly here) create themselves, and just tried to pick up on and follow them as I made them.

I've never done much in-depth study of linguistics, though, so the 'rules' usually tend to create themselves, rather than being guided. I'm still indecisive as to whether that's more productive or destructive, though, heh. At the moment, I'm more or less 50/50.

-asp

[Steel General]

I also do a lot of alternate spellings, letter substitution, and reversing the spelling of various words.