Thread: Germanic Sounding City/Town names?

A small advice from a native German: watch the genders of the words. Cities are normally no problem but larger regions have often names with articles. Examples:
"The Westmarch" - "Die Westmark" (feminin)
"The Swamp of terror" - "Der Sumpf des Schreckens" (masculin)
"The Realm of XY" - "Das Reich von XY" (neutral)

The simplest solution is to go with plural, then "die" is always correct (at least in Nominativ).

[edit] TBF (further down) is right. I was asking myself why my examples sounded so awkward.

Originally Posted by Gandwarf

Or open http://maps.google.com go to Germany, zoom in and start combining parts of placenames!

Please, don't! If you start combining random words together in a language you don't understand, you run the risk of accidentally coming up with rather offensive/overly stupid names.

One of my classmates is from Japan, and one of his friends created an "English" world, with "English style names". One of the highlights I can remember:

Lake-upon-pond (It was at the top of a mountain)

The other 'good ones' would likely get me banned from the forums. (But many involved a misunderstanding on a few English words, the majority of them referencing a rooster. He just liked how that word sounded apparently.)

Sometimes real world names are overly offensive/stupid. I kind of like the name Lake-like Lake upon Wetwater Pond for a hilltop city.

Originally Posted by cfds

A small advice from a native German: watch the genders of the words. Cities are normally no problem but larger regions have often names with articles. Examples:
"The Westmarch" - "Die Westmark" (feminin)
"The Swamp of terror" - "Der Sumpf des Schreckens" (masculin)
"The Realm of XY" - "Das Reich von XY" (neutral)

The simplest solution is to go with plural, then "die" is always correct (at least in Nominativ).

And another advice from a native german:
When you want to create a authentic german setting, then avoid using the articles in german. They are left out in the german cartographic language.
At this example it would only be "Westmark" or "Sumpf des Terrors".
The second thing i want to mention is, that you should keep your hands of names, wich are based on translations. The world known german town names are mainly older than the Grimm Brothers, so the german language was not standardised. That means that you might get strange names by just combining translations.

While I was travelling around in germany the last days, i thought again about that.
I think the key for realistic sounding german names are good river names.
When you have them, just start to add endings. There are a lot of them, i will just write the endings down i can catch now.
-kirchen(from kirche (church))
-au
-stadt(town)
-bach(stream, but than it should be located at a stream as well^^)
-stetten(from stadt)
Well i think that are all for now. I will think about it again, when i have time.

Another variant of place names you often see, are the "-furt" names. This cities are located at rivers as well. "Furt" means "Ford", so you have to think about, who or what crossed this river often in former times. For exampel: The Place where the franconians crossed the Main is called Frankfurt("am Main" or in the east of germany "an der Oder") A few kilometers away is "schweinfurt" located. It a ford where pigs crossed the river(pig=schwein).

Another typical ending for German town names is -reuth, used when forrest was cleared to make space for the town and its agriculture.

Originally Posted by cfds

Another typical ending for German town names is -reuth, used when forrest was cleared to make space for the town and its agriculture.

alternativ versions are roth, rod or rot. So you can mix it up a little bit.

I have in the past found some phonological instruction and a dictionary of Proto-Germanic, this might help you and/or anyone on your way. For clarification, Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed language that was presumably spoken by the Germanic tribes before they started spreading throughout Europe and formed separate languages.

http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/arkan/pgmnlex.html