# Towns and Cities



## Chaos_Overlord (Dec 9, 2014)

I am currently trying to create the settings for a story that I am writing. I plan on the world being in a medieval time period, so any ideas for names that sound like there from that time period.


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## Philster401 (Dec 9, 2014)

Name generators?


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## Chaos_Overlord (Dec 9, 2014)

No I would prefer if they weren't generated names, or if they don't sound like generated names.


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## Philster401 (Dec 9, 2014)

That makes  sense have u looked through forums for a thread on town names?


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## Chaos_Overlord (Dec 9, 2014)

No, thanks for the advice,  but I want the name to be for my story, not based on someone else's.


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## Chaos_Overlord (Dec 9, 2014)

The countries in my story are going to be based of European countries from the medieval times. So i would like for the names to sound like they are old European city names


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## Tom (Dec 9, 2014)

Europe is a big place. There are hundreds of languages crammed into it. What specific type of name are you thinking? German names like Nuremberg? Polish names like Warsaw? English names like Greenwich? 

[By the way, for any moderators who might be reading, should this thread be moved to Worldbuilding?]


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## CupofJoe (Dec 10, 2014)

Google Earth/Maps [other systems are available] may be helpful here.
So... if you really want a Swedish sort of sounding name for your town, zoom in on Sweden [and environs] and see what sort of names there are... or possible what sort of names aren't there...
It will change from area to area, as others have said Europe is big [and old].
In the UK you can have lots of style/rooted names [Danish, Saxon, Norman, Roman, Viking and older] with a few miles. It can help give a sense of deep history too.
I'm old-school I have a huge world atlas and just start at the full colour plates drinking in the way the lands look, and how it all fits together.


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## Chaos_Overlord (Dec 10, 2014)

Thanks, I  think I will look at google maps. But I also want some originality in the names, so that they don't look like the names for cities in real life. Any language that is European is ok for the names.


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## cupiscent (Dec 10, 2014)

What I usually do is pick a language/naming system that I want to use for my country (say: Armenian) and then tweak names from that system. So my example - Armenian - has a lot of place names that end with -an (Yerevan, Kapan, Hrazdan, Sevan) so perhaps I'll take another syllable and put an -an on the end. I try to make that syllable something with significance for the city, because that's how places are named - for the ruling family or a local feature. So if there's a mountain nearby, the mountain and the town should probably have a similar name, and if the mountain is named after the god who lives there, then there we go. Call the god "Gurd", and the town is now called Gurdan.

The important thing is systems. Towns from the same society should feel like they are related in their names.


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## Chaos_Overlord (Dec 10, 2014)

I see what you mean, thanks for the advice.


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## skip.knox (Dec 11, 2014)

This is easier than you think it is. Wikipedia. Look up any existing European city. Better yet, look up a smaller town. 

Right at the top of the article you will find alternate names for that place. Not just alternate spellings, but older versions, including (if appropriate) the Latin name. Pick and choose as you please.

This works also for rivers, mountains and anything that has place names.


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## BronzeOracle (Dec 11, 2014)

CupofJoe said:


> I'm old-school I have a huge world atlas and just start at the full colour plates drinking in the way the lands look, and how it all fits together.



I've used this technique too, I find pouring over geography - political and physical - a great inspiration.  It may also be worth looking at old work maps of Europe during early middle ages, Britain during Roman occupation etc (eg names of Celtic tribes / towns).  Knowing what language/culture you are targeting, as suggested by Cupiscent, will help with honing in on a specific area/time period of maps.


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## Saigonnus (Dec 11, 2014)

Often times towns and villages are named after geographic or aesthetic features. Ashwood might be a place with lots of Ash trees. Shining Plains could be named after the way the moonlight seems to reflect off the pale grass... I think you get the picture. Others might be named after events or people. Torven's Mill might be the oldest place in area, used by miners for the timbers and a village built up around it.

Overall, the names of villages or even towns are important in the scheme of things, especially if the characters in the story spend a significant amount of time there. If it is one they simply pass through on the way to somewhere else, the name just has to sound vaguely like it could be in the same geographic area.

After all, you don't want to have Izgendorf be next to Green Path...


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## Bruce McKnight (Dec 11, 2014)

I like Saigonnus's idea because I name a lot of places in a similar manner: Deerfield, Redbrook, Greenview, etc. However, I also like the ironic names (Clearwater for a city in the middle of a desert) - I was always inspired by whoever decided to name Greenland!


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## CupofJoe (Dec 12, 2014)

Bruce McKnight said:


> I was always inspired by whoever decided to name Greenland!


I've always feared/hoped that it was the first places named for its advertising potential...
"Come to *GREENland* - not quite as cold or white as *ICEland*"


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## K.S. Crooks (Dec 12, 2014)

What I like to do is look up abandoned villages and towns in Canada, England, New Zealand, Nigeria, Zaire, Australia and various other places to find what I think suits my setting.


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## Saigonnus (Dec 12, 2014)

Bruce McKnight said:


> However, I also like the ironic names (Clearwater for a city in the middle of a desert)!



Perhaps it wasn't always a desert... they just didn't bother to rename it once it became so. Could be a good backstory for the region.


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## wordwalker (Dec 14, 2014)

Clearwater may well be the proper name for an oasis in a desert-- or it might have been a real estate scam like Erik the Red did with Greenland. 

The more I think about it, the more I think the best way to pick names is to look at samples. Researching some of the facts and patterns that have gone into it can help, but mainly it's just too subtle an art to learn from anything but other names.


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## AllegedObserver (Dec 21, 2014)

I think everyone has some great suggestions. I have personally gone through most of these processes to locate names of cities and towns.  Another tool that I have used is Google Translate. You might think "why google translate"? Well, most place names began as "Tree on the hill"  or "green [or whatever colour you'd like] valley" and so on - but in whatever language the place is. Using google translate you can compile a list of simple words such as hill, vale, marsh, red, green, blue, and so on - but in what ever language you want to use [say Czech, or slavic, russian, german, etc etc]. After that you can mash stuff together to suit your world. Good Luck!


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## locofife (Jan 1, 2015)

You've been given several good suggestions, and I'll just add one more. Whatever you do, please do not make names with apostrophes in the middle! It makes reading it so much more difficult.


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## Chilari (Jan 1, 2015)

A friend I know looks at the sames of little villages in our county, some of which are rather odd, and uses those. Nobody but the residents of the village itself and anyone who drives through it would know. Within 10 miles of where I live there are place names like Potseething Coppice (where water bubbles out of the ground like a boiling pot), Meadowley, Aldenham, Nordley, Linley, Apley, Colmore Green, Ewdness, Catstree, Wyken, Swancote, Burcote, Hoccum and more. Some of these I didn't know about til I looked at Google just now, even though I could probably see parts of them from some of the higher points of my town.

Pick an area far from big towns, zoom in, make a list of what you see and pick what you like best.


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## Tom (Jan 1, 2015)

The Native American names in my area are pretty obscure. Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Tonawanda, Irondequiot...Some of them mean some weird stuff, too, such as Chautauqua, which translates from Iroquois as "by the shores of the stinking lake". Lake Chautauqua's shoreline does smell a little fishy during summer, especially in the swampy areas.

These unique names have inspired me a lot. Look around your area. I'm sure there are some weird and wonderful place names  you could find.


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## CupofJoe (Jan 2, 2015)

Chilari said:


> A friend I know looks at the sames of little villages in our county, some of which are rather odd, and uses those. Nobody but the residents of the village itself and anyone who drives through it would know. Within 10 miles of where I live there are place names like Potseething Coppice (where water bubbles out of the ground like a boiling pot), Meadowley, Aldenham, Nordley, Linley, Apley, Colmore Green, Ewdness, Catstree, Wyken, Swancote, Burcote, Hoccum and more. Some of these I didn't know about til I looked at Google just now, even though I could probably see parts of them from some of the higher points of my town.
> 
> Pick an area far from big towns, zoom in, make a list of what you see and pick what you like best.


Within a few miles of me and each other are Killdevil Copse, Beatdevil Lane and Devilbegon Farm.
There has to be a story behind those, I've looked through the local histories and there is nothing...
Now that has my mind working...


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## DanJames (Aug 17, 2015)

cupiscent said:


> What I usually do is pick a language/naming system that I want to use for my country (say: Armenian) and then tweak names from that system. So my example - Armenian - has a lot of place names that end with -an (Yerevan, Kapan, Hrazdan, Sevan) so perhaps I'll take another syllable and put an -an on the end. I try to make that syllable something with significance for the city, because that's how places are named - for the ruling family or a local feature. So if there's a mountain nearby, the mountain and the town should probably have a similar name, and if the mountain is named after the god who lives there, then there we go. Call the god "Gurd", and the town is now called Gurdan.
> 
> The important thing is systems. Towns from the same society should feel like they are related in their names.



Pretty much this, it's also good if you combine different languages. For the desert in my verse, the name Woharan was created. A combination of Sahara, like the desert (which happens to mean great desert in Arabic), and the Afrikaans word for desert, which is Woestyn - this conveinently also means wilderness, because that's what it is, there is only one city in it, even though it makes up 25% of the continent and even then that is underground. Even in terms of the city's name within that, while I haven't declared an official name for it, the English equivelent would be 'Gate of a Billion Grains', because the gate is the only enterance to the city and it only appearances for a short period of time during the year, so the cities name is directly tied to it's most defining feature. Same with a city in the nation to the south, it's a large man-made hole in the ground that started as a quarry to dig up rare ore, so the city is simply named 'The Quarry', this may appear somewhat lazy, and on it's own it is. But all the cities in the southern nation are built with the express purose of mining this ore, so they are all named as such (Quarry, Mine, Pit, Shaft, etc).


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## ChasingSuns (Aug 18, 2015)

Usually what I do is use translators. I take words that describe some aspect of the city and translate them into languages that are close to what I'm looking for. Then I play around with moving letters and syllables until I get something that I like.


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