As I was writing yesterday’s post, I found myself struggling to refer to locations on the map, because I had not yet named anything. For some reason, naming things is often an afterthought for me, and when it happens in-game, I inevitably have PCs who want to talk to the inn keeper who has all the information (but I forgot to name them) or to some beggar on the street who I made up on the spot (except for their name) and my brain seizes up and NPCs suddenly have names like “Mike” or “Suzie” or, in one really embarrassing case, the same name as one of the players. I’m better at having names at my fingertips since I started using Behind the Name’s random name generator. But I still have trouble coming up with names when I’m writing. Even deciding on a PC name when I’m creating a new character takes forever. I’ve tried several fantasy name generators, but those never seem to quite fit. I’ve used Behind the Name, but get bogged down in finding the name that has just the right sound an meaning. I’ve used Google Translate to generate words in other languages that I can use as names. For example, if you’re following the journal of Darlunnydd ex Miscellanea (who has been out of the spotlight in that Ars Magica saga for a bit), you might be interested to know that “darlunnydd” is Welsh for “illustrator”. That took while to figure out. And I can see by the length of this paragraph that it’s taking me a while to just jump in and name things, so I’m going to use …
Okay, after more searching, I’m going to use Behind the Name to name the cities. I’m going to use the filters Origin and Community Impression to set the kind of name I’m looking for, order them randomly, and commit to picking a name from the first page that comes up. Here we go …
The City-State at location 22,152 has an ancient Greek kind of flair, so I’m going with a Classical Greek origin and classic impression. And the city is … Ouranos. Yay! I picked one! And it only took me half a day of fooling around with various generators and settings! Hopefully, the next few will be quicker.
Let’s start with the smaller areas:
- 5,162: the city in the far north, which has a Viking flair. Scandinavian origin, urban impression: no results. Ha! Not an auspicious beginning. Try again. Medieval Finnic origin, classic impression: Arvo
- 38,148: The city just above the equator, in a country that I decided is a militaristic dictator ship. I want this one to have a Roman flair, so I need to switch to the Usage filter instead of Origin. Ancient Roman usage, urban impression: Caecilium. (I changed the ending because -ius sounded too much like a person in my mind.)
- 56,154: Seat of an ancient empire, but isolated. I decided to go with the first one from the list of Ancient Roman usage and urban impression, since “Avitus” means “ancestral”, but I’m changing the ending again. This city is no Avitium.
The five continental cities along and west of the meridian are supposed to be wealthy and feudal, but I want to give them some regional flair. I am a little uncomfortable using names of non-European origin, because as a white guy, I don’t want to just go with stereotypes of other cultures. On the other hand, I want this world to be more diverse than just the typical medieval European fantasy world. So I’m going to use a could other cultures here, and do some research to make sure I’m representing them well.
- 36,4: Persian usage, urban impression. Shahrzad. I don’t know if “feudal” is a good descriptor of cities in Persian culture, but I’ll figure that out.
- 21,197: German usage, urban impression: Lorenz.
- 24,1: English (British) usage, formal impression: Royston. (Okay, I fooled around with the impression filter before settling on this one, but I didn’t spend more than a couple minutes.)
- 35,167: Aztec and Toltec usage, classic impression: Tlaloc.
- 35,182: Aztec and Toltec usage, natural impression: Meztli.
The island empire at the eastern edge of the map covers a lot of territory, in both the northern and southern hemispheres. That’s one of the reasons I thought to use flying mounts here. I’m also envisioning this as a kingdom of beautiful gardens. The only large forests are tropical. Rather than base this on a particular Earth culture, I’m going to make this more fantastical. In my imagination, I keep thinking about the Seanchan from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series (which appears to have Asian influences) and the aloof elves from Tolkien. For this area, I’m going to use a variety of usages and origins and see what sticks.
- 31,30: Literature usage, natural impression. Amyntar. This is based on a Greek word meaning “defender” which seem appropriate, since the city is furthest north in the empire, and possibly the first line of defense against any invaders from the west or the wild east.
- 51,39: Literature usage, natural impression. Tuorydril. This is a mashup of two names from the Silmarillion, the parents of Earendil. I decided that the royal city of the empire would be the fortress located here, and this name feels appropriate. (I might name the ruins just to the northwest on the map something from earlier in the history of Middle Earth as the former royal city.)
- 64,47: Literature usage, serious impression. Peredur.
- 57,34: Literature usage, complex impression. Avtandilen. Avtandil showed up as the last name on this page and is based on Persian words. I added the -en ending because it sounds more like an elvish city name.
That’s all twelve major cities and one fortress named, with some idea about the cultures of the areas. I’ve got some research to do, and lots more questions to think about.
RPG Wandering 