Names in fantasy RPGs

[ssampier]

I have the most difficult time coming with names for my quasi-Medieval/Renaissance place names. I found a good source of period first names, but I'm having difficulty with town, city, and country names.

Do you have difficulty coming up with place names? What strategies do you use so your names are unique (rather than Ye Old Miami, New York, or Waterdeep), sound familiar, but aren't unpronounceable?

 

[Wombat]

When I first started my games, I found several very local maps of English counties and just started lifting names of villages. Some of them sounded very odd to an America ear, but were just within the range of believibility and consistency to satisfy the group.

Nowadays, I hijack names from almost anywhere.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Ssampier, if you are having a very difficult time coming up with names, you may want to invest in the Races of XXX series of books. Races of Stone deals with Dwarves, Gnomes and [the dreaded] Goliaths. Races of Destiny deals with Humans, Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, and [the dreaded] Illumians.

Each race has its own random name generator and some these generators have an extra table for generating places. So aside from getting the ame generators you will get the isight as to how effectively portray the races that dwell within your world and to effectively roleplay them better both as a player and a DM.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Random generators for:

Countries
Fantasy towns

 

[Doug McCrae]

If you can get a list of genuine medieval place names, for whatever culture, you can use them straight or swap syllables around.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Each of the races/countries in my homebrew I've put together with a real world culture or at least something close. I'll use old maps or language translators to pick names for cities, towns, etc that fit the region.

 

[Tonguez]

Just think of a list of suffixes eg

-ton
-staff
-cliff
-hill
-lys
-holm
-holt
-kera
-port
-thorp

then pick a random word from a page (eg May)

Mayton
Maystaff
Maycliff
Mayhill
Malys *modify spelling to make it 'cooler'
Mayholm
Mayholt *don't like this so wont use
Maykera
Maythorp-on-Tweed *add some extra flavor
Mayport

 

[Darkness]

I try to name my (nonhuman) characters after metal (and similar) bands. One each for first and last name, in fact.

E.g.:

Rammstein Hammerfall (dwarf)
Therion Moonspell (elf)

 

[Sir Elton]

Monte Cook thought of an ingenius way to make first names or even surnames sound authentic. He said to transpose one letter in the name (or two) with another letter. He did this with the name "Jessica," changing it to "Jevicca."

You can do the same with towns. Even towns in the U.S.A. There is a Paris, Idaho. You can change the P and I with other letters to get the name of a city. Example:

Karis
Parys
Pamis
Laris
Lamis
Lanis
Canis
Cares

Although Paris might be a bad example. Lets take Cedar City. You can change City to any number of suffixes or just words. You might get:
Cedarton
Cedar Town
Cedarholm
Cedarford

or
Cedar River
Cedar Rapids
Cedar Break
Cedar Village
Cedarhearth
Cedarlys
Cedarthorp

 

[Romnipotent]

I have the most difficult time coming with names for my quasi-Medieval/Renaissance place names. I found a good source of period first names, but I'm having difficulty with town, city, and country names.

Do you have difficulty coming up with place names? What strategies do you use so your names are unique (rather than Ye Old Miami, New York, or Waterdeep), sound familiar, but aren't unpronounceable?

Want to get medieval? I mean REALLY try www.sca.org and browse around to find your area, then a herald. Email herald and say your working on some fiction set in 14th century england, and you heard that these people (SCA) had the best libraries for reference material. Theres books and books of names, place names, saints, and all sorts. some even play D&D, I know a couple who do.