City Names

[Drayan]

Everyone who's done a homebrew, how did you come up with names for your cities?

 

[Sagan Darkside]

I am the only rpg collector in the group - so I have a lot of rpg books I can just steal a name from.

If I am really stuck for a name, then next time I hit the game store I will flip through books neither my group nor I would have any interest and steal a name.

The Conan books are also a good place to steal fantasy names.

SD

 

[CrazyMage]

I'm still working my way through my first homebrew, so bear with the newbie.

I like languages, so I have dozens of phrasebooks, dictionaries, etc. on something north of 60 different languages. Using one particular language (say, Latvian) as inspiration for a region gives a nice consistent feel. I have one spot with a pair of lakes--one is "Good morning" in Albanian and the other "Good afternoon".

I also make up my own naming conventions for an area (say the people here use --utar to mark "towns"; so Graffutar is Graff's town, or Graffton if you will). Just learned that towns in England that end in --wick were named so because they had salt mills, and --wick is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for that. Make up a couple of rules, and then get creative.

And mix in names that come from previous inhabitants (like the many cities in the US that are named from various Native American words)

 

[Tonguez]

Crazymage pretty much has it covered

1. Use real world names like Khrzyg and Blayney

2. Get a list of suffixes and add a common word

eg

~town
~ton
~thorp
~ham
~dun
_wick
~lys

add Fell (or Fel)

= Felltown, Felton, Fellthorp, Felham, Feldon, Fellwick, Fellys

add Nor

= Nortown, Norton, Northorp, Norham, Nordun, Norwick, Norlys

then place as desired

 

[haiiro]

I haven't run a homebrew in a looong time, but I still like to add substantial locations -- like cities -- to the Realms (which is where I usually play). I generally try and name them in different ways, to keep things interesting -- some cities by function/origin (a city built around a salt mine = Salt City, for example), some based on modified real world words, others on names of things nearby (to keep a theme).

 

[Hand of Evil]

I try to keep things simple, names I can say.

I look at the nature of the city, what I see its history being and come up with something. I use an animal name and then add something to it, like Falcon REST, Orc Crossing, Dragon FALL. I also look at real names of towns and cities, if you think you can't come up with some just look at those .

 

[Fanboy]

Crazymage - same as my technique. The PCs have been adventuring in the cold northlands, and all the local places are named in a Scandinavian fashion. its good to give regions cultural flavours that the PCs can relate

For example, they are in the town of Frederiksgard, a town ruled by Olaf Frederikson, descendent of Frederik the Bloody.

I also run a CoC campaign set in the future called Cthulhu Rising, and make great use of foreign language dictionaries to choose names for colonies and spacecraft. So far the PCs haven't noticed that the ice planet they are on actually translates as frostyland!

;-)

 

[Angelsboi]

well right now, in my game, the PCs are in the nation of Zodicia (Zodiac) and there are names of places that reflect the nature of that:

Veruna (Moon), Sol (Sun), Aphis (Mars), etc

I looked up celestial bodies and took the names that no one would recognize.