How to Name Cities or Other Places?

[call me rae]

Ugh the bane of my existence I always hate naming places. I do fine with people and even corporations or civilations. But ask me to put a name on a map and my brain goes totally blank.


So anyway I thought I'd ask some lovely people for some tips in how you come up with names for you own cities? Do you just make up words? Do you base them on real places?


Any handy dandy generators you use?

 

[Newson]

Personally, I make them whatever rolls off the tongue easily and fits the description of the city. Like, for a fantasy city filled with thieves, Vaelen sounds like a good name. But I also do combinations of real life locations or use a generator for references so I can make my own city name. I don't like taking other people's ideas, that's called plagiarism.

 

[Deadkool]

I usually put things into categories


Like when I'm trying find a name for an


Evil Corporation


Try using harsh consonants like the ones towards the end of the alphabet. An example would be Roxxon United or Karyk International


Try putting words that signify what scale they're on or even ironically put a benevolent suffix to a malicious company.


Old Medieval Towns


Try using suffixes like -gard -elm or -heim for northern villages/cities. For more temperate climates try using the geography. For example Whiterun, the river that runs into the city it white since it's been froth ed by the nearby waterfall.


Additional: Also try adding a word that can work as a title and give information about the group. For example an evil mining Syndicate could be called Kobold Drilling LLC.


Hope this helped

 

[Deadkool]

Addendum: When all else fails, get together a list of adjectives about the city and translate them into latin. Pick the that sounds the best.

 

[call me rae]

[QUOTE="Wastes Storyteller]Personally, I make them whatever rolls off the tongue easily and fits the description of the city. Like, for a fantasy city filled with thieves, Vaelen sounds like a good name. But I also do combinations of real life locations or use a generator for references so I can make my own city name. I don't like taking other people's ideas, that's called plagiarism.

[/QUOTE]
How do you mean taking other people's ideas? Like using canon locations or something? Because if your doing a fandom roleplay than obviously your going to be using locations that exist in that fandom. And sometimes people even use real places in their original roleplays. I wouldn't count that as plagarism. It's a city it's not like your claiming you own Los Angeles or anything if you set your roleplay there.

 

[call me rae]

I usually put things into categories
Like when I'm trying find a name for an


Evil Corporation


Try using harsh consonants like the ones towards the end of the alphabet. An example would be Roxxon United or Karyk International


Try putting words that signify what scale they're on or even ironically put a benevolent suffix to a malicious company.


Old Medieval Towns


Try using suffixes like -gard -elm or -heim for northern villages/cities. For more temperate climates try using the geography. For example Whiterun, the river that runs into the city it white since it's been froth ed by the nearby waterfall.


Additional: Also try adding a word that can work as a title and give information about the group. For example an evil mining Syndicate could be called Kobold Drilling LLC.


Hope this helped

That was quite helpful thank you.

 

[Dusky]

Geography and history are important. Also consider important people and events in the town's founding.

 

[Silvermist7235]

I have a habit of just saying/typing random things out of my head. Normally I take a random word and alter the words and pronunciation a bit. I normally do this for character names, but place names work just as fine.

 

[MISTER UN. 0W3N]

There are a lot of generators out there you can use if you're feeling pretty lazy. I even use generators to create names for spells and Gods when I'm extra lazy.

 

[Beckoncall]

[QUOTE="mayhem TR4NQU1L17Y]There are a lot of generators out there you can use if you're feeling pretty lazy. I even use generators to create names for spells and Gods when I'm extra lazy.

[/QUOTE]
Especially if you're too lazy to post a link to some generators...

 

[MISTER UN. 0W3N]

Yep. That level of lazy. Or, go to google and type in "town name generator."

 

[Deadkool]

 

[Beckoncall]

I use Fantasy name generators. Names for all your fantasy characters.


but some people don't realize that while we all have access to the same internet, some of us have curated searches or limited search criteria from where we are... so if you have a FAVORITE name generator, you should share it -- not everybody's top hit is the same as yours. I promise.

 

[MISTER UN. 0W3N]

@Deadkool


PFFT! xD That's lovely. Alright, alright... let me get my links out.


Scifi Ideas


Chaotic Shiny


Fantasy Name Generators


donjon


Just the gist so far. donjon is my favorite due to the extensive builds I can do with world building and converting the generator world into a .gif.

 

[Beckoncall]

TYTYTYTYTYTYTYTYYTYTYTYTYTY!

 

[TheVortex]

These are all genius. Normally I just keyboard bash and then try to pick something out of the hideous mess on the screen.

 

[SausageSandwich]

It depends on the genre and location. Fantasy or old fashioned RP towns tend to have descriptive names, such as Rivermeade or Highmoor. Sci-fi cities can be more elaborate and based upon the ideology of the leaders, a utopian city might be Enlightenment or Starreach City. Modern day settings might use a mix of these. Of course the tone of the setting plays a big part, a fantasy horror setting would lose impact if it took place in Pleasant Valley, but it would be better if it were called Black Scar Chasm.

 

[Deity of Ice]

For all of my DnD adventures I normally named my characters something in Japanese.


For example, my Monk's name is Taizen Ryuu, which translates to Calm Killer


For towns and such, just name it something that seems catchy (if that's the proper word for this) enough. Base it off of something from another media if you have to

 

[InfiniteChaos]

What I did with my latest Roleplay that I'm working on still (at the moment of typing this) is that I went to the location in a real world where the RP is set, and used the Modern day equivalent of what is right there and tried to reword it a bit to match the name of that city, but still be different name. It worked very well!


Example --> Vannes, France -> Vaninres, Kingdom of Celtica

 

[Spinoceratopsrex]

Usually what I do is just mash a few syllables together and decide wether or not it sounds good. Or just take an adjective to describe the place and change and/or add a couple of letters to make it sound somewhat original.