What are your methods for naming fictional nations?

maxmordon · Aug 5, 2007

What are your methods for naming fictional nations? or what do you suggest? I have 4 main ones:

Historical names for regions and countries they are based of

Literal translations of the name of the nation they are based of

Classical mythical names of their continental regions

Based on obvious geoghrapy of the region

What other methods do you suggest?

Evaine · Aug 5, 2007

Looking at maps is good for me - I often find regional names I've never heard of, or make tiny villages into cities.
Or I make it up.
My main fantasy country is called Ytir, which means The Land in Welsh. (I'm surprised that no-one else seems to have used it).

Oddsocks · Aug 5, 2007

Sometimes it's just invented words for mine. Other times I use words from the languages invented for those lands. If this is the case, then it's always nice to age the language a bit so that the country names aren't part of the modern language any more, so they'd sound country-namish to speakers of that language too.

JBI · Aug 5, 2007

I use classical Jewish names.

Esopha · Aug 5, 2007

I go to babynames.com, pick a name I like and change a few letters. Occassionally, I'll know that I want a word that starts with 'k' or that means 'water' or something, so I'll look for a name with that criteria.

farfromfearless · Aug 5, 2007

I try not to be too random about the naming of places or nations in my work; to me it always seems as if some writers just pick something that sounds fantasy-ish rather than taking the time to consider elements such as geographical location (costal, highland, etc.) and cultures. What kind of people inhabit the place, and given they are its ancestral inhabitants (rather than generational immigrants), how does their location affect the language, its tone, etc.

In the end the names may still sounds fantasy-ish (I doubt you can truly escape that), but you can at least work to make them sounds as if they belong to the places to which you ascribe them. I found that it tends to help develop a better sense of the world which may really help avoid the typical "We're displaced Brittons living in Uglukarc" syndome.

Ravenlocks · Aug 5, 2007

Funny you should bring this up since I just spent two hours the other night finding a name for the capital city of my protag's country. I sometimes borrow words from other languages for naming purposes, although I always change them around so no one can tell where I got them (or I hope no one can). But often I just come up with random sets of syllables and play with them until they sound right (unless I discard them immediately as unsuitable, which happens a lot too). They have to fit the sound system of the culture's language, whatever it is, or of whichever culture gave the place its name. And I have to like them. Those are my criteria.

Ravenlocks · Aug 5, 2007

Oh, I forgot to add that if I already have bits of the language developed, I sometimes combine them into names that mean something.

ChimeraCreative · Aug 5, 2007

I watch hockey in the winter, pick out last names of players I like and rearrange or change them into town or country names. >.<

-An

farfromfearless · Aug 5, 2007

ChimeraCreative said:
I watch hockey in the winter, pick out last names of players I like and rearrange or change them into town or country names. >.<

-An

How very Canadian LOL!

MattW · Aug 6, 2007

I picked up the main location name for my current WIP off of a interstate sign: a town I'd never heard of, with a little rearranging, and I'm set.

yanallefish · Aug 7, 2007

I go over a basic language -- what do I roughly have for the world/land/whatever of the tale, and I make up the word based on the rules of that language. That's for book/novella length about an established place. Otherwise, I keep a List of Random Names in my LiveJournal where I can pull stuff time to time if it's just a random short story.

ChimeraCreative · Aug 7, 2007

farfromfearless said:
How very Canadian LOL!

I have a Spezza and Corvo in one of my short stories... tee hee... ^_^

-An

airforceauthor · Aug 11, 2007

i actually combine words. you'd be surprised how that works. For example, my fantasy planet had four continents, and one of them is called "Pentacles". Combination of Pentagon and Hercules (for some odd reason i thought of one then the other). Or Izenuan (Belize and Nuance). Yeah, my criteria for joining words are kinda odd, but hey, whatever works for yoU!

Ravenlocks · Aug 11, 2007

Pentacle is a real English word.

Azraelsbane · Aug 12, 2007

Some of the cities in my fantasy series are: Salus, Maltek, Falcroix, Malon, Gwahir, Sheltinata, and Galmedea.

A couple are done on purpose (Gwahir & Salus), but the others just seemed like the right names for the places once I created them. If you can find a connection I'd appreciate being told about it.

Sofie · Aug 14, 2007

Most of the time I use components of existing Swedish place names.
Of course, sometimes that doesn't work - not every country I create is based on Scandinavia, so then I just get an atlas and do a less informed version of the same thing, by combining place names from whatever real country is the most similar to my fictional one.

I'm really bad with coming up with completely new names; in fact, I can only think of one country I made up that has an original name. It just came to me one day.. of course, I had to rewrite the entire history and geography of the place to fit the name, but it was worth it!

MDSchafer · Aug 15, 2007

Personally, I can't stand names that I can't pronounce. To me its like having a scratch on a CD every time I hit some name like Cgisagma or some other made up name.

I get around this by having detailed maps of England and France on my wall. Since I'm writing a near-medieval story, it makes sense to base my world around towns actually named during the middle ages. That and copy of the London Underground since many of the underground stops are based upon midlevel town names.

I've always been of the opinion why try to recreate what's already there for you.

Richard White · Aug 15, 2007

I love to use the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, especially their historical maps.

Nothing like looking at the old Roman names for places in Europe or an old map of Central Asia from the times of the Mongols to give an exotic name to a region I'm working on for a fantasy romp.

TheIT · Aug 15, 2007

I've only got one main kingdom in my fantasy world which doesn't have a true name yet. It's based on portions of a map of the US. Most of my city names are anagrams of the existing cities.

Wintermule · Aug 15, 2007

I either nick them from Norse mythology, or find a cool syllable or two and put it before 'heim'. That's about it. Sad, isn't it?

HopelessDreamer · Aug 15, 2007

My WIP takes place in a country that's supposed to be a lot like Scotland. For the city it takes place in, I took the names of two Scottish cities, molded them together, and rearranged some of the lettering. I don't want it to be too similar, but I want people to "get it".

Solatium · Aug 17, 2007

I'm trying to work up a good way of doing this, since I've only been in this situation once before. When I was writing a story as a birthday present for my little sister, I called my city-state Kurith-al-Fey. It sounds cool, but means nothing.

Kurith=random syllables from my head
al=of the, I guess
Fey=fairies

If I could have kept all of the naming on this exotic, vaguely Arabian level, I would have, but I was collaborating with my dad, who picked the main character names from Shakespeare and let me figure out the minor ones on my own. So some characters are named Rosaline and Livia and Violenta -- and others are named Polito and Hotha and Jorel. And Kurith-al-Fey is the largest city in . . . Fairyland.

For my own stuff, really, I need a good system. I'm liking some of you guys's.

Hummingbird · Aug 30, 2007

For just about anything, I like mixing words of different languages. For example: Midorand. Midori is green in japanese, and Land of English. I enjoy finding the different combinations I can come up with. (That example I made on the spot. I have no clue if it's a real word or not.

)

DocBrown · Aug 31, 2007

Mostly, I just make mine up out of thin air. I don't like to waste a lot of time trying to think of something that is so deep no one is going to figure it out anyway. If I eventually come up with something better as I write or something clever does come along, thank God for the Find & Replace function!

What are your methods for naming fictional nations?

maxmordon

Penúltimo

Evaine

Oddsocks

JBI

Esopha

bam pow zap.

farfromfearless

Ravenlocks

How novel.

Ravenlocks

How novel.

ChimeraCreative

Been there, Done that.

farfromfearless

MattW

Company Man

yanallefish

ChimeraCreative

Been there, Done that.

airforceauthor

Board Fanatic

Ravenlocks

How novel.

Azraelsbane

Agony is defeat

Sofie

MDSchafer

Richard White

Stealthy Plot Bunny Peddler

TheIT

Infuriatingly Theoretical

Wintermule

HopelessDreamer

Solatium

Hummingbird

Pen, Paper, Prepared. ...Write!

DocBrown

Hopes to one day write for food.