Looking for celtic names/words

[MaxKaladin]

I'm building a new part of my homebrew world and its going to have a celtic feel to it. The thing is, I need pre-Christian celtic names for people and places, especially geography. I need names for places like continents, rivers, mountains, islands, tribes and towns most of all as there are many more personal name sites out there than geographic ones and the geographic ones often include way too many non-celtic names.

Two things that might be ideal are:

• A site with a list of personal and place names from various celtic legends. I once found a site like this for some norse legends and that helped with a norse area of my world.
• In the past, I have had luck finding old names for places that are little known today. For instance, in a roman campaign, I discovered that an old name for Italy was Ausonia, so I called the peninsula my world's version of Roma was on Ausonia. Likewise, I called my version of Greece Achaea after an old name for (part of) Greece.

I've been thinking of going with Welsh names because I've found a nice site with a list of names on it and there seem to be a fair number of good ones. Thus, Brythonic-language names/words would be especially cool.

Does anyone have any good sources?
Thanks!

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I'm building a new part of my homebrew world and its going to have a celtic feel to it. The thing is, I need pre-Christian celtic names for people and places, especially geography. I need names for places like continents, rivers, mountains, islands, tribes and towns most of all as there are many more personal name sites out there than geographic ones and the geographic ones often include way too many non-celtic names.

Two things that might be ideal are:

• A site with a list of personal and place names from various celtic legends. I once found a site like this for some norse legends and that helped with a norse area of my world.
• In the past, I have had luck finding old names for places that are little known today. For instance, in a roman campaign, I discovered that an old name for Italy was Ausonia, so I called the peninsula my world's version of Roma was on Ausonia. Likewise, I called my version of Greece Achaea after an old name for (part of) Greece.

I've been thinking of going with Welsh names because I've found a nice site with a list of names on it and there seem to be a fair number of good ones. Thus, Brythonic-language names/words would be especially cool.

Does anyone have any good sources?
Thanks!

I'd check out the Everchanging Book of Names shareware program. I wouldn't be suprised if they had a Celtic chapter that you could download.

http://ebon.uni.cc/

 

[Moorcrys]

Extraordinary Book of Names?

Don't know if you want to spend any money on the idea but Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names has a number of different celtic groupings... lemme look...

Anglo-Saxon
Cornish
English (aristocratic and rustic)
Medieval English
Scottish (as well as Medieval Scottish)
Irish (as well as Medieval Irish)
Gaelic
Welsh (as well as Medieval Welsh and Old Welsh)
As well as a couple pages with Medieval English binames.

It's about 21 pages specific to those groups out of the book (and the names are listed in paragraph form so there's a lot of names per page). You probably have more knowledge of naming conventions and such than I do, but it also provides a brief description of how names were used and how to put them together. And the binames section I found extremely interesting, although again I'll say as far as naming history and convention goes I'm an amateur.

It's been a worthwhile purchase for me, actually inspired me to rework my campaign world to give region-specific (or at least region-specific sounding in some cases) names for its inhabitants and cities.

Drawback: price... it's about 35 bucks, but maybe you can look around on ebay or a discount store to get it at a lower price.

Moorcrys

 

[tjoneslo]

http://www.gaminggeeks.org/Resources/KateMonk/

The Onomastikon should be at the top of your list.

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pound/

This is a list of word generators and word sources. If nothing else the links section should keep you busy for a few hours.

 

[Ibram]

If you are looking for peoples names try this site (its been a great help to me)

20000 Names

 

[janta]

(edit: I see someone's beaten me to the punch on the Onomastikon! I second that site as a great resource -- I use it all the time.)

For a general list of all manner of (mainly Irish) Celtic links, try this:
Irish Literature, Mythology, Etc.

Oh, and for a breakdown of the elements of place names, try this:
Index of Celtic and Other Place Name Elements

Be forewarned though -- that link above looks to be pretty scholarly. I'm not sure how much help it'll actually be, but it definitely has a lot of information.

Hope this helps!
--Janta

 

[JimAde]

I use the tool found here:

http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/index.html

It's a dictionary program with modules for a bunch of languages including Irish Gaelic (which I based my Elvish on), and it's free. They make their money of translation services.

I just get the translation for a couple of words that describe the feature, then mash 'em together and tweak it to make it pronouncable. I have also had luck with Google. Say I need the Irish word for "gate". Search Google with "irish word for gate". It's amazing what's out there.

 

[Blood Jester]

Agreat resource if you are looking for a specific word is

The School Gaelic Dictionary

It gets tricky if you try to figure out tenses or compound words, but it gets you pretty far.

 

[Hjorimir]

I use Gaelic Dictionaries for my campaign. Hope it helps.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Thanks for all the responses!

I have EBoN and the onomasticon already but I'm checking out some of the other links mentioned here. It looks like I'll have plenty of personal names. Now I just need to make up good place names.