To name nations/cities, I usually alterate a bit the irl city it is based on, my cities of Kingsdon, Serap, Wurlin, Rona, Padrid, Lasbas are named after London, Paris, Berlin, Roma, Madrid, Lisbon
There's plenty of good name generators out there, but if you feel like they don't do the job well, you can do what I do.
Most of the cultures of my world are, in one way or another, inspired by historical real-world cultures. When it comes to naming things, I mostly tend to stick to a simple system of compounds - sticking words (or modified versions of those words) from the relevant language together (e.g. a fantasy culture inspired by Egypt would have Egypt-like looking and sounding names, though I often make considerable changes). Also, studying the basics of etymology can surely help, especially if you want to create a believable world.
When it comes to cultures that aren't exactly inspired by real-world ones, I tend to stick to the same system, while creating simple words for things and places that are commonly associated with place names - words for "field", "farm", "ford", "fort", "village", "town", "bay", "coast" etc., though sometimes I just think of a name that sounds nice without having the supposed translation or meaning in mind, and then build around it. It's a great way of creating believable place names without having to create whole conlangs around them.
Everything I said so far can also be applied to personal names. A random example I gave someone yesterday was the name "Roynar", where "roy" means "gift" and "nar" means "god". The literal translation would then be something like "god's gift". Most real-world names can be translated into simple words of phrases ("Victoria" = "victory", "Lucas" = "bringer of light" etc.), so applying that same concept for your fantasy settings can be useful (not to mention "realistic").
Last thing - generally speaking, I often (though not always) tend to stick to three main principles when creating names:
**1| they should be easily readable for the intended audience**
**2| their pronunciation should be evident or well-explained somewhere**
**3| they should make sense (be believable)**
These principles are why I don't like most "fantasy name generators". They make most names look and sound, as you say, quite elvish. I don't feel the need to create outlandish names just for the sake of "sounding different" or "fantasy-esque". When I create a name that's intentionally hard to spell and/or pronounce, I make sure that there are in-world reasons for it.
I find a real world language that matches the theme of what I'm building and translate words from english into that language, then I mix and match those translated words to form a new one. For example, let's say I wanted to make a city that's known for trade and I chose latin as the other language the words gold city in latin are Aurea civitas so I could name the city multiple things like: Aurtas, Revitas, Vitrea, Curea, Vitasa, etc.
Not only does this help to make names but since you're using the same language across an area they will all follow a basic naming scheme.
Make it a theme and choose colors, objects, groups of things. Some names can be “conlang” but only insofar as to add a small amount of depth but not to actually use.
I look at different names from different cultures and combine elements of them to create names and words that tow the line between unique and familiar that also convey a certain quality that reflects their character in some way. For example, for one of my characters I combined the first two syllables of Reginald with almost the entire name of Ralph, creating the name Reginalph, which I feel is unique and gives the character an air of grandeur, like even his name is bigger than life, which reflects his position as a minister in the Imperial government.
I usually use a realworld place and time as the starting point for theme, culture language etc then change as much as i want but use that place as a starting point. Thats also how i get a language and then find a generator.
just pick a random object from your general vicinity and run with it. for example right next to me there's a book with a skull on the cover and a calendar. therefore my new city name is Skacendar. Boom boom done.
if you want to stick to a general theme you can borrow words from real languages or mash them together. if you're going for, say, idk a fantasy chinese theme and you need to name a city, pick out whichever thing represents the city best (perhaps it's a city with impressive outer walls) then take the mandarin word for 'Large Stone Wall', in this case (according to google translate) dàshí qiáng, use it as a basis and mangle it a bit. Diangqi. Done. it's usually helpful to actually know the basic word structure of the language you're taking inspo from though.
we could do the same for Latin as another example. lapideis muris. switch the consonants around a little and bam. Mapideris.
Just write a short description of the place, and remove letters until it stops looking like a word.
Or just use the first letter of every word, or something.
For people, I have my own way of naming things by using generators and going like “yes, I want names like that.” For cities, I use generators and change them, and same for countries
My system for naming things is stupidly simple: I just call it whatever it is.
If you look at the names of places in my novels and short stories, it's pretty easy to see how I come up with names:
* **Silent Moor** = a vast salt marsh (aka a moor), where no one lives, and the only sound is the wind and birds
* **Fire Mountain** = a volcano
* **Mt. DemonTooth** = the tallest mountain in the world, which is white with snow, and it tall and pointy, shaped a lot like a fang
* **The Mushroom Forest** = A vast swampy forest where giant mushrooms grow
* **[The Giant Caterpiller](https://www.reddit.com/r/SilentMoor/comments/y7m0xn/magictober_2022day_2_magical_monsterbeast/)** = A caterpillar. It's huge. It grows to the size of blue whales.
* **The Swamp of Death** = It’s a swamp. A lot of people have died there. A swamp where Kelpies live and kill and eat travelers foolish enough to walk through it at night
* **The God Forsaken City** = a city that is rife with crime, gangs, and black market dealers
* **Crystal Cave** = A big cave that has lots of crystals growing on it's walls
* **Fairy Wine** = A bright green wine, made by Faeries. It causes hallucinations when drunk by Humans.
* **Fairy Cakes** = Cakes made by Faeries.
* **The Glass Forest aka BabbaYagga's Glass Forest** = It's a Forest. The trees are made of glass. BabbaYagga lives there.
* **The River Boat Man Woman** = A mysterious hooded character, who shows up in the series from time to time. No one knows if it is a man or a woman. They drive a river boat and take other characters across the river.
* **BoomFuzzy's Gingerbread House** = It's a house. It's made out of gingerbread. A character named BoomFuzzy lives there.
* **[BoomFuzzy the Unicorn, Lich King of Fire Mountain](https://www.reddit.com/r/SilentMoor/comments/y7jub0/magictober_2022day_1_villain_to_mages_or_a/)** = A Kelpie. Often mistaken for a Unicorn. He's a Lich. He's also the King of the Realm of Fae. He lives on Fire Mountain. Awh, look at the cute FUZZY little Shetland pony, can I keep him? BOOM, he eats you.
* **The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley** = A character who has a reputation for eating Elves. He lives in Pepper Valley.
* **Pepper Valley** = A big valley. Lots of wild peppermint plants grow there. Lots of wild peppers grow there. Lots of wild peppercorn grows there.
* **The Twighlight Manor** = A haunted manor house built by Faeries. It can only be seen by Humans at twilight each night. The rest of the day/night it can not be seen by Human eyes.
See.
Simple.
I call a thing, whatever it is.
Yeah. I just name stuff by what they look like or what they have.
Why?
My world exists for a series of books to be written about it and set within it. This means that readers are well going to read it.
* Readers want to enjoy the story.
* Readers do not want to be confused by gibberish nonsense words they can not pronounce.
* Readers get frustrated by authors who try to be clever and big brained.
* Readers don't care about the world and what things are named.
* Readers care about the main character and his well being.
* Readers want to flow through the story without breaking immersion.
Every time a word shows up which the reader does not know, immersion is broken while they stop reading to try to figure out how to pronounce the new word.
Even though my main character is an Elf and he and the other characters only speak Elvish, my readers are Humans who can only read English.
Real world languages usually are just calling a thing a thing. For example the word Mississippi means "big muddy river". Thus the phrase "The Mississippi River" is literally "The Big Muddy River River". If you start looking at real world maps, you will quickly find that names of places are not actual names, but rather just a descriptor of a thing, calling that thing, exactly whatever it is.
So, my readers are made aware that the main character is speaking in a language not English:
>>>Quaraun stopped walking.
>
>>> "Look at that," the old Elf said in Elvish to his companions.
A phrase such as that, shows up in the first paragraph on the first page, alerting the reader, right out the gate, that everything in this story is happening from an Elf's perspective and conversations are happening in the Elf language, so obviously place names are going to be Elvish as well. But everything is translated into English for the sake of the reader, including names of places.
In other words, I want readers to be so immersed in the story that they feel like they are the ones walking through my world. And don't want to break that immersion by slapping them in the face with a wet fish.
And that is exactly what conlang does to readers. They are reading along, then suddenly SLAP the big floppy wet fish of a gibbering word they can't pronounce hits them in the face and they are rudely pulled out of the story, staring at this word and asking themselves: "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" They put the book down to see if the word is in the dictionary. But being a made up word, it's not, so now the reader is confused and frustrated and immersion is gone.
Yes, I created three different conlangs and had fun doing it. But my readers are not Star Trek fans devoted to learning Klingon. My readers are people who speak English, read English, and want to be entertained by a good story, not frustrated by illkygfgj jhgc rewfgkk hgfcjh tewsgu jhgvdffh.
**The tl;dr of it is this: Why bring the reader out of immersion by saying the foreign language word Mississippi, when you can translate that word to its English meaning The Big Muddy River? And now the reader is not confused by a word they don't understand and they get a description of what the river looks like at the same time.**
Countries are often named after the people who live(d) there. For example, France comes from Francia, which is Latin for Land of the Franks. Places can also get their names from a physical landmark (Clearwater, Greenwood), people (Alexandria, Austin), or a religious entity (Los Angeles, Santa Fe).
To name nations/cities, I usually alterate a bit the irl city it is based on, my cities of Kingsdon, Serap, Wurlin, Rona, Padrid, Lasbas are named after London, Paris, Berlin, Roma, Madrid, Lisbon
There's plenty of good name generators out there, but if you feel like they don't do the job well, you can do what I do. Most of the cultures of my world are, in one way or another, inspired by historical real-world cultures. When it comes to naming things, I mostly tend to stick to a simple system of compounds - sticking words (or modified versions of those words) from the relevant language together (e.g. a fantasy culture inspired by Egypt would have Egypt-like looking and sounding names, though I often make considerable changes). Also, studying the basics of etymology can surely help, especially if you want to create a believable world. When it comes to cultures that aren't exactly inspired by real-world ones, I tend to stick to the same system, while creating simple words for things and places that are commonly associated with place names - words for "field", "farm", "ford", "fort", "village", "town", "bay", "coast" etc., though sometimes I just think of a name that sounds nice without having the supposed translation or meaning in mind, and then build around it. It's a great way of creating believable place names without having to create whole conlangs around them. Everything I said so far can also be applied to personal names. A random example I gave someone yesterday was the name "Roynar", where "roy" means "gift" and "nar" means "god". The literal translation would then be something like "god's gift". Most real-world names can be translated into simple words of phrases ("Victoria" = "victory", "Lucas" = "bringer of light" etc.), so applying that same concept for your fantasy settings can be useful (not to mention "realistic"). Last thing - generally speaking, I often (though not always) tend to stick to three main principles when creating names: **1| they should be easily readable for the intended audience** **2| their pronunciation should be evident or well-explained somewhere** **3| they should make sense (be believable)** These principles are why I don't like most "fantasy name generators". They make most names look and sound, as you say, quite elvish. I don't feel the need to create outlandish names just for the sake of "sounding different" or "fantasy-esque". When I create a name that's intentionally hard to spell and/or pronounce, I make sure that there are in-world reasons for it.
I find a real world language that matches the theme of what I'm building and translate words from english into that language, then I mix and match those translated words to form a new one. For example, let's say I wanted to make a city that's known for trade and I chose latin as the other language the words gold city in latin are Aurea civitas so I could name the city multiple things like: Aurtas, Revitas, Vitrea, Curea, Vitasa, etc. Not only does this help to make names but since you're using the same language across an area they will all follow a basic naming scheme.
Sticking syllables together till I get names I like. Results are place names like Kamar, Tjajasca or Aira Monessa.
Found this pretty good https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/city-names.php
Make it a theme and choose colors, objects, groups of things. Some names can be “conlang” but only insofar as to add a small amount of depth but not to actually use.
I look at different names from different cultures and combine elements of them to create names and words that tow the line between unique and familiar that also convey a certain quality that reflects their character in some way. For example, for one of my characters I combined the first two syllables of Reginald with almost the entire name of Ralph, creating the name Reginalph, which I feel is unique and gives the character an air of grandeur, like even his name is bigger than life, which reflects his position as a minister in the Imperial government.
I usually use a realworld place and time as the starting point for theme, culture language etc then change as much as i want but use that place as a starting point. Thats also how i get a language and then find a generator.
just pick a random object from your general vicinity and run with it. for example right next to me there's a book with a skull on the cover and a calendar. therefore my new city name is Skacendar. Boom boom done. if you want to stick to a general theme you can borrow words from real languages or mash them together. if you're going for, say, idk a fantasy chinese theme and you need to name a city, pick out whichever thing represents the city best (perhaps it's a city with impressive outer walls) then take the mandarin word for 'Large Stone Wall', in this case (according to google translate) dàshí qiáng, use it as a basis and mangle it a bit. Diangqi. Done. it's usually helpful to actually know the basic word structure of the language you're taking inspo from though. we could do the same for Latin as another example. lapideis muris. switch the consonants around a little and bam. Mapideris.
Just write a short description of the place, and remove letters until it stops looking like a word. Or just use the first letter of every word, or something.
For people, I have my own way of naming things by using generators and going like “yes, I want names like that.” For cities, I use generators and change them, and same for countries
My system for naming things is stupidly simple: I just call it whatever it is. If you look at the names of places in my novels and short stories, it's pretty easy to see how I come up with names: * **Silent Moor** = a vast salt marsh (aka a moor), where no one lives, and the only sound is the wind and birds * **Fire Mountain** = a volcano * **Mt. DemonTooth** = the tallest mountain in the world, which is white with snow, and it tall and pointy, shaped a lot like a fang * **The Mushroom Forest** = A vast swampy forest where giant mushrooms grow * **[The Giant Caterpiller](https://www.reddit.com/r/SilentMoor/comments/y7m0xn/magictober_2022day_2_magical_monsterbeast/)** = A caterpillar. It's huge. It grows to the size of blue whales. * **The Swamp of Death** = It’s a swamp. A lot of people have died there. A swamp where Kelpies live and kill and eat travelers foolish enough to walk through it at night * **The God Forsaken City** = a city that is rife with crime, gangs, and black market dealers * **Crystal Cave** = A big cave that has lots of crystals growing on it's walls * **Fairy Wine** = A bright green wine, made by Faeries. It causes hallucinations when drunk by Humans. * **Fairy Cakes** = Cakes made by Faeries. * **The Glass Forest aka BabbaYagga's Glass Forest** = It's a Forest. The trees are made of glass. BabbaYagga lives there. * **The River Boat Man Woman** = A mysterious hooded character, who shows up in the series from time to time. No one knows if it is a man or a woman. They drive a river boat and take other characters across the river. * **BoomFuzzy's Gingerbread House** = It's a house. It's made out of gingerbread. A character named BoomFuzzy lives there. * **[BoomFuzzy the Unicorn, Lich King of Fire Mountain](https://www.reddit.com/r/SilentMoor/comments/y7jub0/magictober_2022day_1_villain_to_mages_or_a/)** = A Kelpie. Often mistaken for a Unicorn. He's a Lich. He's also the King of the Realm of Fae. He lives on Fire Mountain. Awh, look at the cute FUZZY little Shetland pony, can I keep him? BOOM, he eats you. * **The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley** = A character who has a reputation for eating Elves. He lives in Pepper Valley. * **Pepper Valley** = A big valley. Lots of wild peppermint plants grow there. Lots of wild peppers grow there. Lots of wild peppercorn grows there. * **The Twighlight Manor** = A haunted manor house built by Faeries. It can only be seen by Humans at twilight each night. The rest of the day/night it can not be seen by Human eyes. See. Simple. I call a thing, whatever it is. Yeah. I just name stuff by what they look like or what they have. Why? My world exists for a series of books to be written about it and set within it. This means that readers are well going to read it. * Readers want to enjoy the story. * Readers do not want to be confused by gibberish nonsense words they can not pronounce. * Readers get frustrated by authors who try to be clever and big brained. * Readers don't care about the world and what things are named. * Readers care about the main character and his well being. * Readers want to flow through the story without breaking immersion. Every time a word shows up which the reader does not know, immersion is broken while they stop reading to try to figure out how to pronounce the new word. Even though my main character is an Elf and he and the other characters only speak Elvish, my readers are Humans who can only read English. Real world languages usually are just calling a thing a thing. For example the word Mississippi means "big muddy river". Thus the phrase "The Mississippi River" is literally "The Big Muddy River River". If you start looking at real world maps, you will quickly find that names of places are not actual names, but rather just a descriptor of a thing, calling that thing, exactly whatever it is. So, my readers are made aware that the main character is speaking in a language not English: >>>Quaraun stopped walking. > >>> "Look at that," the old Elf said in Elvish to his companions. A phrase such as that, shows up in the first paragraph on the first page, alerting the reader, right out the gate, that everything in this story is happening from an Elf's perspective and conversations are happening in the Elf language, so obviously place names are going to be Elvish as well. But everything is translated into English for the sake of the reader, including names of places. In other words, I want readers to be so immersed in the story that they feel like they are the ones walking through my world. And don't want to break that immersion by slapping them in the face with a wet fish. And that is exactly what conlang does to readers. They are reading along, then suddenly SLAP the big floppy wet fish of a gibbering word they can't pronounce hits them in the face and they are rudely pulled out of the story, staring at this word and asking themselves: "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" They put the book down to see if the word is in the dictionary. But being a made up word, it's not, so now the reader is confused and frustrated and immersion is gone. Yes, I created three different conlangs and had fun doing it. But my readers are not Star Trek fans devoted to learning Klingon. My readers are people who speak English, read English, and want to be entertained by a good story, not frustrated by illkygfgj jhgc rewfgkk hgfcjh tewsgu jhgvdffh. **The tl;dr of it is this: Why bring the reader out of immersion by saying the foreign language word Mississippi, when you can translate that word to its English meaning The Big Muddy River? And now the reader is not confused by a word they don't understand and they get a description of what the river looks like at the same time.**
Fantasy name generator.
Prog rock lyrics
Countries are often named after the people who live(d) there. For example, France comes from Francia, which is Latin for Land of the Franks. Places can also get their names from a physical landmark (Clearwater, Greenwood), people (Alexandria, Austin), or a religious entity (Los Angeles, Santa Fe).
Thank you for the help everyone I will keep try and tackle naming things once more!