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How do you prefer to name places of interest?

Roughdragon

Minstrel
Just as the title says, how do you prefer to name places of interest? There seems to be, at least to me, two ways of doing this, and I could definitely be wrong. The first is to give a strange sounding name such as, for example, Djinkaard or Vernonwell.

The other way, the one I prefer to use, is to use a description of the place as its name. For example, "The Looking-Glass Plateau" is the name of a pace where the ground is so smooth that you can see your reflection. Another example of this is "The World's Basin", the lowest point in the world. So the question is basically, how do you name places in your worlds?
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
I usually start with knowing what I want them to sound like.
Are they going to sound like Medieval English, or Japanese, or with lots of consonants or guttural sounds?
Do I want short names or long ones?
Will the names be descriptive or have they been given/made up?
I usually have a feel for all of these.
I've been known to just write down "place names" until I get fifty or so and the see which one will work, or need tweaking.
I pick'n'mix or shuffle until I get what I want.
I steal from real world places all the time.
ATM I'm trying to plot out a story set in 1920s England [more specifically the South east of England] so I have an old map of the area, a notebook and a pen. I'm looking for places that sound right for the story. There might be a deep dark mystery in a place like Blackwater, The Devil's Punch Bowl or Preston Candover, perhaps less so in ones called Liss, Basingstoke or Steep...
Nothing wrong with any of these places but some feel more right than others.

I like the feel of Looking Glass Plateau but for me I feel that World's Basin is a bit off...
How do they know it's the worlds lowest place?
What did they call it before they knew that?
 

Gurkhal

Auror
I usually just gives it a straight name in a language that I know from language that is associated with the type of culture I have in mind.
 

Roughdragon

Minstrel
I feel that World's Basin is a bit off...
How do they know it's the worlds lowest place?
What did they call it before they knew that?

Good point, I guess you can make an argument that it's just the lowest place they've found so far.
 

elemtilas

Inkling
Just as the title says, how do you prefer to name places of interest? There seems to be, at least to me, two ways of doing this, and I could definitely be wrong. The first is to give a strange sounding name such as, for example, Djinkaard or Vernonwell.

The other way, the one I prefer to use, is to use a description of the place as its name. For example, "The Looking-Glass Plateau" is the name of a pace where the ground is so smooth that you can see your reflection. Another example of this is "The World's Basin", the lowest point in the world. So the question is basically, how do you name places in your worlds?

Both are methods I've used. I think every writer and would-be writer has done exactly the same.

The first method you outlined is the nativising method --- it accepts the existence of people and a culture speaking a language who call such and such a place "Djinkaard", but does not necessarily elaborate further. That name máy have meaning in their language (the way "New York" still has an obvious meaning in English) or perhaps it may nòt (the way "Chicago" has no obvious meaning in English).

The other method is to use a prolanguage the names of which stand in for actual native names. For most of us, being English speakers and writing in English, English will be the prolanguage of choice. In this case, there is assumed to be a native name in the local language, but it's never revealed. Just as English stands in for the speech of characters in the story, so English names stand in for the native ones.

You see this in Tolkien all over the place: he'll have "Imladris" next to "Rivendell". Some places, like "Angmar" or "Rhun" are left untranslated; while others like "The Shire" are never shown in their native form.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
The other method is to use a prolanguage the names of which stand in for actual native names. For most of us, being English speakers and writing in English, English will be the prolanguage of choice. In this case, there is assumed to be a native name in the local language, but it's never revealed. Just as English stands in for the speech of characters in the story, so English names stand in for the native ones.

You see this in Tolkien all over the place: he'll have "Imladris" next to "Rivendell". Some places, like "Angmar" or "Rhun" are left untranslated; while others like "The Shire" are never shown in their native form.

I was also going to mention Tolkien! One of the great things about Tolkien is that he gave thought to how the cultures in his world would refer to their own lands and to other lands. For instance, the land of Lothlorien means "Lorien of the blossom" in Sindarin (Elvish) which is a reference to the garden of Lorien in Valinor where the "gods" live. The name is often shortened to just "Lorien". In Westron speech (common speech) it is usually referred to as "The Golden Wood" which is a simple descriptive name referring to the most memorable aspect of that land, it's mallorn trees with their golden leaves. However, the men of Rohan who live south of Lorien are afraid of the place and believe it is full of phantoms, so they name it "Dwimmordene" or vale of phantoms in their own tongue. In a different example, Dwarf places are never known in their own language to other races because the Dwarves keep their language secret. Moria is an Elf name. The way Galadriel wins over Gimli's heart is by showing that she knows all the secret Dwarf names of old Moria, proving that she has been a friend to Dwarves and respects their culture.

I think that one of the reasons Middle-earth feels so real is because Tolkien really gave a lot of thought and care to the names.

I think using plain English names can work too, but there is a danger of being frightfully dull and unoriginal. For instance, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant take place in "The Land". What, you guys couldn't think of anything else? Anything at all?

Though I think using plain English names is used to very striking effect in The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. Set in an apocalyptic extreme far future where the landscape has become alien and places are given name like "Country Whence Comes the Great Laughter" and "Road Where the Silent Ones Walk" or "Place of the Ab-humans". It's very effective at conveying how strange and alien everything has become.
 

Eric Hawke

Dreamer
Consider naming them after historic events/people that (re)shaped the city/place. Such as naming them after a long dead king, a conqueror, a natural distaster or whatever.
 
I think another good way to do it is to translate the description of a place into another real-world language that's close to the feel you want for the place or culture naming it, and then make small changes to spelling so it's not a direct translation and feels less like it belongs in the real world.
 

K.S. Crooks

Maester
One option is to give the location some historical significance (your world's history) to be named after. This requires a little backstory, which you may or may not want to include in the novel. I like to look for names of towns and villages no longer occupied (ghost towns). Depending on the type of setting you're dealing with you can try ghost town in New Zealand, Canada, United States or other locations more recently colonized. Another option is to look for old names for places such as Mumbai used to be Bombay, Hồ ChÃ* Minh was Saigon and of course Constantinople is now Istanbul. A quick look can be done here: List of city name changes - Wikipedia
 

Coldblue

Dreamer
I often find that use both method's you employ, though typically town/city names I tend to make "plain" and I only give descriptive names to regions/locales.

Honestly, it usually comes down to which I have first: the location or the backstory, and one usually feeds the other. If I have a solid backstory I can usually pull something forward to name the town, but if I don't I'll name the town and let that feed its history.

When I'm making up the name without the backstory, honestly I usually try to pick a first letter and then let that lead me. I look down at the keyboard, see 'J' and start thinking of what might follow. Oftentimes what comes to mind is plain, 'Jerome' for example, or maybe I'll just let some randomness come together 'Jahatma'. It has to work with the parts around it of course, but end of the day if I find something I really like, I'll make sure to find a way make it work!
 
A lot of my place names are real place names rearranged or smashed together, or with letters changed. I pick the feel I want to go for and then pick real places similar to that, then have some fun.

Not too long ago I came up with a batch of names with a colonial American feel by chopping up the names of important cities in colonial America and putting them back together again, sometimes changing things around. Some of the ones I got were Rosmond, Farester, New Aven, and Ilvandel.
 
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