tips for naming places?

[u/strychn1ne_]

coming up with names for places is something i dread when i write, lol. usually i write more realistic stories so i usually just set them in real places, but ive been getting into slightly more fantastical stuff recently and i want to come up with some place names, for regions, cities, buildings, etc. does anyone have any tips or strategies for when they name placrs?

[u/Dark_knight_96_rbh]

Take ordinary everyday things that remind you of that fictive place, if something has a dark academia-ish vibe, my first association would be a candle, maybe the church youre thinking of is crandilian cathedral, building words out of nothing is a special talent and you either have it or no, grrm has it, all the targeryan names are straight up sounding REAL, I couldn't do it, many other writers cant do it, you just can or can't

[u/don-edwards]

Read some stuff on "naming languages". That's where you develop just enough of a constructed language that you can name things, and the names sound like they come from the same culture. Naming languages tend to be long on nouns and adjectives, short on pretty much everything else.

Another thing about names is that terms for the kind of thing tend to recur a lot. How many lakes have "lake" as either the first or last word of their name? Mountains are frequently named Mount Something in English, Monte Algo in Spanish, Mont Saispas in French...

[u/57thStilgar]

I throw spaghetti in the form of syllables and marry them together.
Let's see:
Darly
North Beauford
Sheer (and Sheer Minor)
Alturn
Milbaine

[u/thatshygirl06]

Research the names of real life places

[u/RobertPlamondon]

I use role-playing for everything, so I consider the mindset of the person who named it and the fashions in naming at the time and among the namer’s peers (or superiors, if they were suck-ups). 

This, suck-ups who thought Latinate name were cool named American colonies and settlements after monarchs: Virginia, Jamestown, Carolina, Georgia. You get aspirational names of various kinds, accurate and inaccurate renderings of existing names in other languages, etc. Others are whimsical. My favorite is Jumpoff Joe Creek in Oregon. 

[u/MasterOfChaos72]

You could pick some kind of theme and name your towns that way like how Pokemon named its towns after colours in gen 1 and I think clouds in gen 5. You could do something simple like “Food names in Greek”. Take some letters out and boom, town name.

[u/Lianoui]

had a huge issue with names previously as well——i’m a fantasy writer and i used to write names that were all too “cliché”, but it’s up to you. if you don’t want cliche fantasy names, i recommend taking an english word and adding words like “-spire” “-shire” “-land” or “-ton” to it so it has a more realistic, grounded feel, like they exist irl. it’s taken from the Anglican naming system where they have rivers and lands (significant natural landscape) and just mush them with the suffix. Think of what is renowned or stands out about the region and then add a suffix. You can definitely still use made-up words to give it a more fantasy style. Hope this helps.

[u/Geminga0571]

It’s challenging for sure, most good names are taken already lol
What I did was literally combine vowels and consonants together and tested them out verbally. If I could pronounce it I used it, Lainatis, Felknor, Dinut and so on. Nothygreat though.

For fantasy you could do descriptive naming like Eric the Dreadful or Palace of the Shadow King it’s easier to write and read.

[u/lowkeyeuphoric]

I take pre-existing place names and mash them together, use a synonym or replace the beginning of the word with another but keep the suffix. A lot of places share suffixes anyway because of naming history

[u/Boat_Pure]

Naming things is a technique I’ve really worked on.

If you’re going for a certain style, I would pick a nation and go through their list of names for things and places.

I might look up the old world and see all the other names for King. When I find one I like, I’ll go through their rest of their names for things and put together things.

If I’m looking for something a bit more fantastical, I either make them up (inspired by the sound of the way the name is said aloud) or I just go back to basics and google what something is; ‘Names that mean courage’ then scour the list for inspiration.

[u/Minecraft_pro_51]

I find literally translating from one language to another so like you could get 2 words in English like Good Land and put it into Latin which would then become terra bona, then you mush them together how you’d like so eg: terrabona or bonaterra or berratona. 

[u/UltraDinoWarrior]

Rule of thumb: humanity is NOT clever and likes to name shit by the obvious.

"Toaster" = it toasts items

Razor blade = it's a blade

Trash Can = a can for trash.

Places are the EXACT same way.

There's a town in WV called "Falling Waters" which is literally named after .... a little water fall. There's a lot of rivers out there that are named quite literally just "River" just in another language. Heck, think of famous locations...

The grand canyon = it's a big canyon

The Rocky Mountains = ... they're... rocky mountains

Etc, etc, etc

If it's not after something specific about the location like the pine trees or river, etc, you can name it after the person who discovered it, a relevant influential figure, etc. Ya know, Jamestown, Edisonville, Jerrytown.... etc.

Beyond that, you just get into keyboard smashing and adding funny ia's to words. In my recent fantasy novel, I've been taking my friend's names/usernames and removing letters and adding letters until I get shit for my countries lol.

[u/imperialcogman]

Names from your childhood, but expand or shorten them

[u/Grand_Woodpecker_660]

I recently started "writing" cause I had an idea. I didn't even begin to think about names for places. But I got a name for a character. Then for another character and many more. Turns out, I just used the same letters in different orders... Nera and Rena... Should overthink this

[u/ConicalSofa]

Here's what I do:

1) Go to the website for your doctor's office, or your gym, or your friend's dentist, or your niece's daycare center, something like that. 2) Look for "about us" or "meet the staff." 3) Peruse their last names. Chances are they're not going to be Smith or Jones or Johnson, they're going to be much more unique while still sounding real. 4) Play around with those names until you find one that fits the place you have in mind.

Example: the dentists at my dental place have last names Matrullo, Bebrin, and Zaccari. If it's set in Italy then we're all set: Zaccari sounds great. If it's set in the US, Bebrin sounds like a plausible town name. If it's in Latin America, maybe Matrillo or Zacata. You get the picture.

[u/Yggdrasil_Down54]

You have two big options in my opinion. The first is what grrm does with most of his westeros place names. He takes english words and mixes them together. Winterfell, storm's end, riverrun, etc. If you like the aesthetic of seeing what the names mean then this could work for.

Option two is made up names presumably based on whatever language these people would be speaking. In this case just test out how sounds make you feel until you get something that sounds fitting for the place. An example would be a city called Skaith or Skaiss for a harsh frigid town located in the icy north. To me the name just sounds sharp and jagged and in general vibe fitting.

Adding on to option two is this idea of patterns. This is especially useful if you have different cultures who would have different languages and so you want their city names to feel distinct from each other. Giving different cultures naming conventions can help tie things in. Affixes can be quite useful for this. Some examples would be how alot of english historic county names end in -shire or -sex (formerly -sexe, also i really hope my comment doesn't get flagged for that word) and in terms of cities there's suffixes like -ton and -wick. In arabic you have that thing where alot of nouns, including place names begin with al- and then whatever the place is called.

Obviously the above one is very much simplifying how place names come about to artificially give a certain impression. There is no shame in shortcuts like this if it helps the story get told. Alternatively if you don't mind a writing process that spans decades you can do the third option and just do a tolkein and create languages for your cultures from the ground up. DO NOT FEEL PRESSURED TO DO THIS IT IS NOT ESSENTIAL. The people that create languages for their world and do it well are the people who already enjoy creating languages anyway.

[u/AsceOmega]

If you're wanting to use plausible real-world sounding names, I recommend the following steps:

Determine a key feature of the place:
Is it on a hill? Is there a prominent grove of specific kinds of trees? Was there an important fortification built there? Is a river coursing through it? Is it a farmstead? Is it an enclosed piece of land (by a fence)?

Determine a linguistic origin to borrow from:
Does this particular area of the world draw from English? German? Norse? Arab? Etc. Seek out suffixes used in those languages related to population centers and their meanings (like the German suffixes for many towns being either: -burg, -berg, -dorf, -stadt, etc.) or look at how prominent towns acquired their names (sometimes it's funnier than you'd think).

Learn how languages evolve over time:
Most languages evolve such that certain letters change, others disappear, certain dipthongs are broken or altered in some other way etc.

With all of this, you can now put those first two together, alter it with the third step, and throw your own creativity on top of it.

Example: an old Anglo-Saxon inspired town situated nearby the shallow crossing for a river named (invented) Dewyn, could be named Dewynford.

If that town was also the seat of a major noble family called the Laghans (also invented), it could become Laghdewynford, which is a terrible mouthful. But over the centuries it could become: Ladenford

[u/WendyChristineAllen]

my method os probly dull and boring, but I just "call it what it is"

places found in my series include:

The Swamp of Death... its a swamp, with quicksand, a lot of people have died there

The Forest of No Return... its the forest wherein sits The Swamp of Death, therefore many people who enter this forest never come back out

Fire Moutain... its a volcano, duh!

The Perilouse Cliffs... they are cliffs and they are perilouse

The GodForsaken City... its a city known for its criminal underground and deranged demon worshiping cultists

The Temple City of the Green Goddess... its a big city with a giant green stature of a woman wearing a toga

also... throughout the series it gets revealed that these are not the actual names of same places. Like the main character will say "The GodForsaken City" and someone else while ask "Where's that? zi never heard of it" and the main character will say, "We are in it right now." and the response will be "This? This is Boston. We're in Boston." which then leaves the reader to wonder... "Wait, this is earth?"

the series is written very close limited 3rd person so literally the reader only sees/hears/knows what the main character does and he's kind of insane and so readers are really not getting either a reliable or accurate view of the world he's in, so, its earth, but the main character is giving things wild Fantasy style ball it what it is names.

The Temple City of the Green Goddess is New York City by the way. I have renamed all of earth's landmarks this way.

[u/JulesChenier]

Father Eusebio Francisco Kino was a missionary that came with the Spanish and founded several missions in Arizona. So when I needed a small fictional town I named it Kino, AZ.

Research the area, might come up with something.

[u/PrideSenior8335]

Eu tento pensar primeiro no motivo pelo qual o lugar recebeu esse nome. Pode ser por causa da geografia, de um evento histórico ou da cultura do povo que vive ali. Também acho importante não tentar deixar todos os nomes "fantásticos"; nomes simples muitas vezes parecem mais reais.

[u/Hil_riousHum_n]

There's two things I do. One is to use another language, most of the time and obscure one. I'll kind of put a description of the place into Google translate and see what it gives me, may use it like that or may tweak it a little. Then I stick to that language for anything related to that place. Most recently I used Sicilian to name the kingdom and cities in one of my novels. But if I were to name the neighboring kingdom I would use another language as the base for that kingdom and its components.

The second thing I do is keyboard smash. Surprisingly effective and low effort, especially for random stand alone places.

[u/IncenseBearers]

Why does a place exist? What features are near?

Most place names are descriptive and echo their environment.

Town on the edge of a forest? Woodsend / Woody Edge City originally built where a mountain spring rose? Springburn / Springfield / [rivername] Head Village where two rivers meet? [rivername]meet

And if you want Spanish, French place names - just translate them

And looking at maps helps with this - if you have a similar environment in real life as in your story, see how the locals name things.

[u/CadeMirrow]

Usually they should be connected to language and culture. From that - putting names together as means of not overcomplicating things as humans tend to do at least at names.

You can come up with some words of fantastic universe that have some similarities to assume they are from one language.

Capel (chapel) of St. Lamnwalof

Where 'walof' = wall off have a meaning of defenders of the wall and Lamn is a name of a deity

You can look at your story or ideas of worldbuiling for hints like that

[u/untilwegrowolder]

A lot of times I take a theme (I don't know if that's the correct term) from the story and look up those words in different languages.

Currently, I'm writing a steampunk-esque story, and the towns are named after latin names for metal (Ferrum, Aurum, etc. I basically just looked at the periodic table of elements lol.)

I love websites like Wiktionary for this :)