For one campaign, I had my players come up with a unique name for every single magic item, and how they came across it, when they made up their characters (3rd level for that game.). I made them tie it in somehow to the game world, and allowed them to make up events, people, names etc., as long as it didn't conflict with the timeline that already existed.
This 1) further fleshed out the timeline, and 2) gave me about 20 more potential plot hooks, and 3) made the world seem much more alive to the players.
I was happy with the results, but certainly that's not the only way to do it. It helped that mine was a "low magic" setting.