Toponyms in the Playground: Place naming resources and hints

[Altair_the_Vexed]

In response to a certain other thread on this forum, I've written up a blog post on naming places. Here's a summary:

When we invent a place for a game, we need to name it. We can just mash together some syllables until they sound cool, or we can try to make a name that seems to have history, that sound natural and hints at the culture of the place by using real elements from real cultures. Or if we're really adventurous, we can invent sounds that have invented meaning, and use those to build our place names - like Tolkien famously did.

"Toponymy" is the naming of places, from the Greek "topos" place and "onoma", name. The places all around the Old World have names that have developed over centuries or millennia - names usually derived from a simple description of the place. The New World, by contrast, is named far more recently, with names that are usually simple, current language terms that are easily understood, or native names perhaps spelled poorly by the settlers. Both follow similar conventions once you look into the language.

Reflecting culture
Where is this place you're naming? What are the people there like? Are this a place of familiar, homely folk, or do you want to invoke a feeling of "otherness" about your invented place?

The names of the British Isles are familiar sounding to we English speakers (even those outside the UK). They can seem homely, even rustic and Olde Worlde (especially to those outside the UK!).

Similarly, the names of other nations' places, made up as they are by different language elements, can seem foreign, but familiar - "Porto Nova" reflects that it's inhabitants speak some Mediterranean, Romance language, so we have a handle on the sort of culture we might find there, just from the name.

A place called "Klak'amtuu" or "Shissiissii" tells us that this is a culture we are not familiar with.

Settlements and other places
Since you're reading this in English, I'll start by looking at English place names.

Nottingham is a worn-down version of "Snotta-ingas-ham", meaning the settlement ("-ham") of the people ("-ingas") of Snotta (a Danish chieftan). That "-ingham" ending is all over England.
Canterbury is from "Cantware-burgh", meaning the Kentish ("Cantware-") Stronghold ("-burgh"). Again, that "-bury" ending, and the related "-burg", "-borough", and "-burgh" ending are all over the British Isles.

So armed with this knowledge, your invented place could be called Notesbury ("Snotta's Stronghold"), or Cantingham ("Settlement of the people of Kent") - some other combination from the name elements appropriate to the culture.

There are plenty of resources for such elements of British place names on the web, so I won't just reproduce a list here.

Similarly, you can find that sort of list for other cultures: Here's a list for Japanese place names, and a short list for Maghreb toponyms.

From these examples, you can see that place names tend to be derived from a few common parts:

• geographical feature (river, hill, valley, forest, etc)
• type of settlement (farm, fort, village, town, etc)
• direction or position (north, south, upper, middle, etc)
• person of note (founder or clan leader, saint, etc)
• description (dark, cold, red, windy, etc)

It can be helpful to make up a plain English name with such elements, and then translate it into whatever language is appropriate - for example: Hill Fort Town might be "Lawtonbury" in pseudo-Britian, or "Okajo Machi" in pseudo-Japan.

Country and regional names
Nations and regions are often named for who lives (or lived) there (usually this is the name given to the place by its inhabitants), or a descriptor of the region (usually this is a name given by outsiders to the region).

Thus we get Scotland, the land of the Scots; France, named for the Franks; and Afghanistan the place of ("-istan") the Afghans, and so on.
While on the other hand we get Cameroon, the land of shrimp (Portuguese "Camaroes", via French "Cameroun"), from the abundance of shrimp found by European explorers in the Wouri River; and Wales, named by the Saxons for the foreigners ("Welisc") who lived there.

This can be useful - dual names for a place can help show historical enmity between the natives and the outsiders who imposed the other name.

Here's a list of country names and etymologies - and a list of regional names for places within countries that aren't on the former list.

You can see from those lists that national names - in the Old World - tend to be derived from a few common elements:

• people's or tribal name (Franks, Angles, Danes, Sicels, etc)
• description of people (foreigners, bearded ones, etc)
• geographical description (green, forest, mountainous, etc)
• place indicator (place, land, home, etc)

So again using your language of choice to reflect the culture you want to imply, you can name your region in a similar manner to settlements and places, but using these elements.

Geographical feature names
The great geographic features of the land were often named long long ago, in languages far removed from everyday. The new folk invading or colonising a place would just use the local name, not knowing or soon forgetting what it meant.
The River Avon in England means the "River River" - "avon" is derived from an ancient British word for river.

Alternately, the name may be clear and descriptive in the current common language - the Misty Mountains in Tolkien's Middle Earth, for example.

Features like mountains, rivers, lakes, marshes, and headlands will usually include some element that means just that - "mountain", "river", "lake", etc. Together with that element, there will usually be another part that simply describes the feature - "misty", "dark", "wide", or similar - or perhaps the name of a person or tribe.

Once again, we end up with the same sort of naming method, choosing from a this set of word elements.

Alien and bizarre places
To suggest a strange an exotic place, you can use language elements the players will not be familiar with, or invented languages like Klingon, or Quenya - or even your own invented gibberish sounds.

So in Middle Earth, we have Imladris, meaning "Cloven Valley" for Rivendell, and Hithaeglir meaning literally "Towers of Mist" for Misty Mountains.

One could with relative ease invent a range of place name word element and use them consistently for a new culture. This could work particularly well in contrast with a region of familiar sounding names - for example, Crick Hollow, Buckland, Chetwood, and Weathertop giving way to Khazad-dum, Lothlorien, Gondor and Cirith Gorgul as we progress further away from the homely Shire with Frodo and Company.

Similarly, this technique works even with names that while relatively familiar, don't have that homely feeling created by names like your local region's names - so English name elements giving way to Germanic and Scandinavian names, or Latin names will create an atmosphere that evokes those lands, and all the assumptions that go with them.

Conclusion
Because place names can be evocative, and can be laden with culture, we should be careful not to just use them at random. Names and style choices in game settings will create an atmosphere. With only a little research and work, you can bring life into a place just by speaking its name.

[Hootman]

This is super helpful. I've been trying to find a simple way to wrap my head around naming stuff in my world and had hit a brick wall, so thank you.

You could even build a name-inspiration table out of this similar to the NPC Name Generator on the back of the DM Screen (I may have already sketched it out on some scrap paper in my excitement...) and have a tool that can be available to a DM both on the fly and as a place to start brainstorming while building content for a game. If you're interested, I could toss up the one I built from your post for your reference and critique.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

This is super helpful. I've been trying to find a simple way to wrap my head around naming stuff in my world and had hit a brick wall, so thank you.

You could even build a name-inspiration table out of this similar to the NPC Name Generator on the back of the DM Screen (I may have already sketched it out on some scrap paper in my excitement...) and have a tool that can be available to a DM both on the fly and as a place to start brainstorming while building content for a game. If you're interested, I could toss up the one I built from your post for your reference and critique.

Thanks! Peer-to-peer praise is what this forum is made for!

Myself, I tend to bookmark whatever lists of language elements I can get hold of, rather than make generator tables- but feel free, I'd love to see one.

[Bohandas]

One thing that should also be noted is that a lot of these words should not be seperate if you want the place name to sound convincing. Thus "Glendale" "New Hamshire" "Harrisburg" and not "Glen Dale" "New Ham Shire" or "Harris Burg". I've even seen professional RPG designers make this mistake (cf. "Icewind Dale")

[Altair_the_Vexed]

One thing that should also be noted is that a lot of these words should not be seperate if you want the place name to sound convincing. Thus "Glendale" "New Hamshire" "Harrisburg" and not "Glen Dale" "New Ham Shire" or "Harris Burg". I've even seen professional RPG designers make this mistake (cf. "Icewind Dale")

Yes - but when part of the name is a common enough word, like "Dale" in your example, it can fairly legitimately be used as a separate word. You can also find this happening with old words that were in common usage, but are now considered archaic, or dialect.

Examples from the UK:

• Darley Dale, Denby Dale, Lathkill Dale
• Thorpe Latimer
• Solway Firth
• Glen Nevis, Corby Glen
• Lindow Moss ("moss" is a dialect word for "marsh")