Tips for Generating Location Names for Fantasy Settings

Map of the United States of the Home Ruler from the Atlas of True Names.

Coming up with location names is something most fantasy authors, gamemasters and world-builders must do from time to time. Making those names compelling in a way that adds to your world rather than detracting from it can be daunting, and justifiably so. If you fudge a place name, you may very well be stuck with a blight on your world. A dark spot cursed with a name that is some combination of silly, burdensome to pronounce, or otherwise detrimental to your audience's sense of immersion.

I face this problem whenever I look to send my D&D players off to explore a new part of my world. Fortunately, I have developed a set of guidelines that I use when crafting new location names that have served me well.

Obvious names are not necessarily bad. Places are typically named after something and that something is often rather obvious. Some quick real world examples I can think of include:

• Washington (a guy's last name)
• Bath (named for a prominent recreation spot)
• Salt Lake City (prominent natural feature)
• Capetown (the city's location plus a word that means city)
• Fort Collins (named for the town's original function)

If you go this route, you can come up with some pretty decent place names, especially if you use less common synonyms or slightly change certain words. Some examples from my game world include:

• Stillford (a town on a stream with a distillery)
• Fenwatch (an outpost by a swamp)
• Thunder vale (a valley with a roaring waterfall)
• Lastholt (named for a stronghold that served as a last stand. Last+hold change the "d" to a "t")

Keep the names short! Even well established fantasy writers get a little carried away and occasionally come up with names that become mental and verbal stumbling blocks for those who encounter them. The Drow city of Menzoberranzan from the Forgotten Realms is a classic example of this problem. At five syllables, it's a pain in the butt to say!

Think about it! It's tough to find a real world city with that many syllables! After some consideration, I came up with Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Alexandria, as real world equivalents and all of those cities have at least one pair of syllables that can be blended together to effectively shorten the pronounciation. In fact, if a place DOES have an exceptionally long name, you can bet someone will try to find a way to shorten it! Philly, L.A., Frisco, etc. Maybe that's why the Drow are so cranky! They live in an obnoxious to pronounce city with no decent nickname!

I know, I know… We're talking fantasy, not reality and the elves and ponytaurs are supposed to have exotic and elegant sounding place names. That's great! You can do that without lots of syllables! Believe me.

When you simply must get exotic, translators are your friend! Remember how in part one up there, I said places mean something? Well, one of my favorite tricks is to run common descriptive words or phrases through Google Translate or sometimes elven or other fantasy translators to come up with place and character names. With Google Translate, I pick a real world culture to serve as an analog of the fantasy culture that named the spot, and play around until I get something that sounds good. For example, "Wood City" in Welsh is "Dinas Pren"… not a bad name for an elven town. Incidentally, "Salt Lake" in Welsh is "Llyn Halen", which is not to be confused with its inferior successor "Llyn Hagar". 

Anyway, the system is not perfect, but if you stick with the cultural analog method, you can come up with groups of exotic sounding place names that sound like they have a consistent linguistic history in your game world… because, in reality, they do!

Those are just a couple quick guidelines that I like to apply when coming up with place names for my world. They have served me well so far, and if you give them a try, I hope they work for you as well.

N is for Names

We are officially starting the second half of April A to Z people! Are you psyched!? I know I am!

Authors and game masters alike regularly face the task of naming characters, places and any other proper noun they wish to incorporate into their story. Choosing a proper name is a task fraught with pitfalls. What if it’s unpronounceable? What if it’s easily confused with the name of a different character? What if it is easily corrupted into something giggle-worthy. This last actually happened to me when I ran with a pre-named villain called of Dekelor. From the first time I uttered his name, my players have responded with an enthusiastic “Dick Lord!” and this wasn’t even a name I made up! This was Wizards of the Coast’s doing... jerks. Granted, WOTC has included poor name choices in its publications before. (see my previous post, Hack & Slash for examples.)

A well crafted name is a powerful thing. It’s memorable, summarizes the essence of the character, is consistent with the language convention for that culture from which it arose, and it rolls trippingly off the tongue. For a GM, however, crafting a fine name for a fine character can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. While authors can take the time to massage their character names into a well molded form that fits the character like a second skin, a GM might have only seconds from the time his or her players say, So what is the shopkeeper’s name to come up with a response without causing a noticeable hiccup in the game flow.A wise GM should have go-to sources for creating character names on the fly. Some might keep a list of interesting names as they hear them, and tick them off as they get used. I have already posted about my go-to sources for names, and I encourage you to check it out. I would, however, like to add a new source to that list.

Metal Singers... specifically, European metal singers often have names that would fit right into a fantasy world. I actually realized this while checking out the blog Mithril Wisdom, another participant in this year’s A to Z. The author, Jamie, has been posting nerd metal songs as his entries. While the videos are mindblowing in their own right, checking out the bands’ websites has yielded a wealth of truly epic names. Names like Peter Stålfors, Jesper Strömblad and Magnus Linhardt. I could populate a dwarven empire on metal singers alone!A wise GM should have go-to sources for creating character names on the fly. Some might keep a list of interesting names as they hear them, and tick them off as they get used. I have already posted about my go-to sources for names, and I encourage you to check it out. I would, however, like to add a new source to that list.

Metal Singers... specifically, European metal singers often have names that would fit right into a fantasy world. I actually realized this while checking out the blog Mithril Wisdom, another participant in this year’s A to Z. The author, Jamie, has been posting nerd metal songs as his entries. While the videos are mindblowing in their own right, checking out the bands’ websites has yielded a wealth of truly epic names. Names like Peter Stålfors, Jesper Strömblad and Magnus Linhardt. I could populate a dwarven empire on metal singers alone!
Metal Singers... specifically, European metal singers often have names that would fit right into a fantasy world. I actually realized this while checking out the blog Mithril Wisdom, another participant in this year’s A to Z. The author, Jamie, has been posting nerd metal songs as his entries. While the videos are mindblowing in their own right, checking out the bands’ websites has yielded a wealth of truly epic names. Names like Peter Stålfors, Jesper Strömblad and Magnus Linhardt. I could populate a dwarven empire on metal singers alone!



Edit: Another technique that works well for generating names... especially for non-human races is to begin with words related to a culture's primary interest. Tolkien did this extensively when naming the Rohirrim (and other characters from his books, I suspect.) Anyway, someone who is not an obsessive linguist could still start with the names of minerals when crafting dwarven characters, or plants for elves. Using this method, I quickly came up with the following:


Dwarves

• Dendra - from "dendrite" the tree shaped branches of a crystal
• Auric - from the latin for gold
• Palladir - derived from Palladium

Elves

• Bromelia - from "bromeliad" plants that include artichokes and pineapples
• Lauralus - from "laurales" the order of plants that includes cinnamon and sassafrass
• Commeline - from "commelinaceae" - the "dayflower family"

Simple as that. What are your go-to sources for picking memorable names?

What's in a name?

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

Even if it was called the cat piss plant?

Unless you get into fantasy writing as a means to flesh out the stories behind the several languages you have invented, you likely will struggle to come up with effective character and location names from time to time.

 

Fun Fact: I have run several of the names in this video through various generators/translators

to come up with character names for my game.

I struggle with this constantly because, as I have mentioned before, a poorly chosen name can destroy the entire tone of a story. I have adopted a number of tricks and techniques to help me avoid the pitfalls of poor naming conventions, which I shall now share with you, my dear readers...

1. Break out the virtual baby book: The name generator over at Behind the Name is one of my ultimate go-to resources for coming up with character names. I have assigned a couple real-world cultures to each fictional culture in my game. When I am pressed for coming up with a good character name, I simply pop up the generator and click away until something fitting comes up. Tying each of my fictional cultures to specific real ones has the added benefit of providing a sense of consistency among the characters encountered in my game.

2. Google Translator is your friend: Google Translator is to places as Behind the Name is to characters. When I feel at a loss for naming a city or geographical region, I'll pop a description of it into Google Translate and tweak it until something sounds good. For example, "river port" translates as "flod havnen" in Danish, which then gets shortened to "Flodhavn" -the name of a trade city in my game, which is located at the mouth of a river.

3. More exotic names call for more exotic translators: There are numerous online translators for the various languages devised by Tolkien. I will occasionally turn to one of these when devising a name for more arcane locations, elven cities or characters, or dragons. Again, I typically plug in a basic description and let the translator make it sound cool.

4. Leave it to the Brits: One of my favorite naming conventions that I have come up with is the technique I use for naming the Gnomes in my game. Whenever I need to introduce a new gnomish character, I break open a map of the British Isles and peruse the place names. I don't know why, but it just seems to fit. example names include: Ipswitch Cogsworth, Gatwick Rugeley, Arlsey Biggleswade, Sandy Bracknell, Spilsby Holt

5. Brush up on the classics: Finally, The Encyclopedia Mythica is an online resource dedicated to the various mythologies of ancient cultures. The myths described on the website provide a treasure trove of names and ideas just waiting to be bent to my... or your nefarious purposes.

Okay writer and gamer friends, do you have a particular method to your naming madness?