Naming Cities and towns in your homebrew settings

[Lylandra]

Depends on the setting. For a generic "European medieval" setting, I can easily open Googlemaps of my home region and use some of the small villages' names. They tend to be something between Tolikenesque and Gothic Horror.

For other settings, we sometimes take one language which could fit into the setting and name my places akin to this language. One of our PCs for example came from a french-inspired region with the name "Colline-Blanche" (white hill).

 

[redrick]

Sometimes, I will google things like "slavic towns" for a list of names of historic places that might not be recognizable to my players, but still have that feel I'm going for. So you could google something like "Ancient Egyption Towns:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Egyptian_towns_and_cities


I used to use a lot of non-english words in my place names, but I found the players struggled to keep track of them, so now I try to limit it to a few major locations (regions, major cities, countries), but keep the place names in English. Keeping track of a bunch of confusing names isn't fun for the players, especially when it's a language that I happen to speak and they don't.

 

[Bill Reich]

I often use real place names from places near where I've lived. My players and I make the assumption that whatever we say in English is actually being said in the language of the region, so it doesn't bother any of us. The first town I named was "Bad Ankle" because a group of migrants on the Northwest Road had stopped there because the leader had a bad ankle and it turned out to be a good place to settle. I have also named towns and whole geographical areas after players who have passed away over the years, which happens when you have been gaming since 1982.

 

[MechaPilot]

So I've got my own setting that I'm building and I'm trying to come up with names for the towns and cities. its based off ancient Egypt, but I don't want to just rip straight from history. Does anyone have any tips for naming cities and towns for homebrew settings?

People have a tendency of building towns in certain places, and naming them in certain ways. Let's look at some real world town names:

Newport
Portsmouth
Nashville
Beverly Hills
Oxford
New York
Jamestown
Yorkshire

We can see a few things here that can easily be patterns in naming.

A town in or near hills might be named "_____ Hills."
A town might be named for a founder or a noble starting with the name in the possessive form "_____'stown."
A town might be named "_____port" if it's a coastal town.
A town might be named "_____mouth" if it sits at the mouth of a river (or other geographical feature).
"Town" comes from "ton" meaning a walled settlement, so any town could be "_____town" or "_____ton."
"Ville" actually means town, so you could also name nearly any town "_____ville."
"Ford" is another common town ending, likely referring to a place where a river would be forded, so a town near a river could be "_____ford."

If you really want to go the extra mile, you could come up with in-world words that mean hills, port, mouth, town, ford, etc. and apply those made-up words using the real-world patterns described above.

 

[MechaPilot]

So I've got my own setting that I'm building and I'm trying to come up with names for the towns and cities. its based off ancient Egypt, but I don't want to just rip straight from history. Does anyone have any tips for naming cities and towns for homebrew settings?

map for referenceView attachment 90042

To offer specific suggestions. . .

I see you have to cities on the coast at the mouth of river tributaries (the top of the map). You could go with Eastport and Westport. You could go with Port_____ for one, and have the more recent port city called Newport.

 

[the_cowley]

Thanks for the thoughts. Good mentions and aids. I hadn't thought about the potential of throwing to much at players with all in world names in language.

 

[Celebrim]

Google translate.

Give the towns cheesy English two word names - bell tower, hot gates, big rock, red stick, stone walls, two rivers, frog pond, etc. Then translate the names into a language with an ear/sound appropriate for your culture. Or don't translate them if you are going for a rugged frontier feel.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I name towns for a specific feature of the town, or for a specific event that happened there. Bad Ankle, provided above, is exactly what I do, only I run a 'time changes things' pass over it and might have that town down as Bankley. Depends on the setting theme I'm pushing. Having the towns names for clear features helps reinforce player memory -- "Hey, remember that town, the one with 10 wells?" "You mean Tenwell?" "Yeah! That one!"

I've learned that while I might geek out on cultural names, my players don't uniformly hold the same likes, and that using easily remembered names for towns and NPCs works way better for immersion in the plot than having to recall how to pronounce that one name. If you can't remember it easily, you won't, a tautology of obvious proportions. So, I now use names common in real time, with perhaps a single letter changes - Tom becomes Ton, frex - and town names clearly ties to reinforcing information - Tenwell has ten wells, and this was important for something.

However, I still dislike completely obvious naming, like Eastport and Westport. I'd build in some history with Newport and Oxley (named for the fearsome pirate Ox, a minotaur who rampaged the seas until he founded the town and retired as a king among pirates). Newport does most of the business these days, and is highly mercantile, but if you need something special, something you might not be supposed to have, then Oxley's your port of call.

 

[MechaPilot]

However, I still dislike completely obvious naming, like Eastport and Westport.

Although I suggested those exact names above, I don't particularly love them. I fully concede that they're obvious, simplistic, and at least a smidgen lazy. All of which makes them great names to use when you just need a name on-the-fly, but I do prefer having more of a historical or in-world tie-in to the name.

 

[TreChriron]

I love this site --> http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/

And they say there you can use them for anything. Super cool resource!