michael.harrel
Dreamer
When you're naming things in a fictional world, there are several ways to go about making things up. Sometimes you make stuff up as you go along (Ã la GRRM's Dothraki vocabulary). Sometimes you methodically and painstakingly craft every detail to give it internal consistency (Ã la Tolkien's Elvish vocabulary). And sometimes you allude to the outside world that orient your readers in the fictional world (Ã la Howard's nations and people-groups). Which of these methods do you usually use, or which would be your ideal?
In Camlann, most of the nations and the noble families are named after people or places in Arthurian legend or Celtic mythology. The name Camlann itself is taken from the location of King Arthur's final battle. After these initial important references, though, we moved to a looser method of name creation; basically trying to match the "feel" of the key names we'd gotten from the legends, without worrying about attaching the new names to particular real-world myths.
In Camlann, most of the nations and the noble families are named after people or places in Arthurian legend or Celtic mythology. The name Camlann itself is taken from the location of King Arthur's final battle. After these initial important references, though, we moved to a looser method of name creation; basically trying to match the "feel" of the key names we'd gotten from the legends, without worrying about attaching the new names to particular real-world myths.