Verbum et Etsis: Names

In High School I took 4 years of German (plus a semester of being a TA for my German teacher) and spent a month in Germany. (Note: It was a full immersion class where the teacher didn't speak any english to you during class or even outside of class from day one) I draw a lot of inspiration from that and for an example a nation in my campaign is called Meeris and is a nautical nation. Meer is the german word for sea.

Also, I use english words and just kind of butcher them until they are not recognisable right away. One example is that I have a city named Noltus and Soltus one is northern and the other southern. It may seem obvious I don't know but don't overlook english words and the segments that make them up.

That said, for my desert nation I have been using words from arabic to name some of my cities. However, seeing as how a lot of the words are a bit long for my taste that I've picked out I have started just listening to google translates pronunciations of arabic words and taking bits and pieces I like and altering them.

Recently, DM Mainprize posted a list of dwarven phrases on one of my threads because I had said I was having trouble with Dwarven location names. He suggested combining words to make meaningful titles. An example is my capitol which specializes in trade and sits on a lake which is called Varnurbar which means Lake trade. Definitely a cool way to use a fictional language as well.

Okay, one last tip on language use. If you want a city to be named after its use etc. in another language just google "_____ in other languages" or put it in a translator and keep changing the language you are translating to until you find something you like. I have occasionally used this method when I'm running low on ideas.

Note: I love the name Ignamus.

I enjoyed this post. Using other languages is a great resource that is often overlooked. I have found this to be much more beneficial then random name generators when it comes to coming up with important location names.

Ya, I make up names (both people and locations) based on the phonemes of various Earth cultures. Here's a list of some of the major nations and their capitols on the main continent. Tell me if you can guess their Earth counterpart:

Serrido -- Cida Serrido
Etraille -- Lacodia
Treschenvur -- Heidar Gen
Oscader -- Yeursk
Alla'rahn -- Moha Dior
Shensedai -- Ko Shan Li

I use different languages for the names of NPC's from each nation. Such as Alhasan from Arabic for my desert nation. I'm thinking of using germanic names for my other human nation. I like doing it this way but it does restrict you if you adhere to it religiously. I imagine the same applies to location names. But, I definitely like the idea.

I have almost no Idea on any of the names other then ones almarianknight has already mentioned so I'll just say that I really like all of your names and leave it at that.

Also to Friartook, I love how much info you provided in such a short response. The idea of using dead languages is good because the connections are less obvious to your players. Also, reading about the Captain Captain name made me audibly chuckle. Loving it.

Ok, finally have a chance to contribute to all these sweet threads. So for names I totally agree other languages is an epic place to turn. I generally will grab from other fictional languages first before using or adapting from real world languages. I do this unless the culture or group or person matches a specific earth culture, then I will take a word from an existing real world language. Another method I use is using a specific section on Thesaurus.com. Thesaurus website is one of my main resources and I have it open almost always in another tab. I use it to A. grab less common forms of words and B. to learn the history of a word. When you search for a word on thesaurus.com and get a list its synonyms, there appears on the right hand side of the page a brief little section on the words origins and history. I will often take its origin word from various old languages and use that instead of the word itself or its synonyms. This helps to give an old/ancient feel to the words you use. So below are some links to resources I use for finding names.


Dwarven Dictionary - Warhammer, Tolkien, Others


Elven Dictionary - Tolkien


Thesaurus - link leads to the synonyms for "master" see right hand panel for word origin and history


Google Translate - great for changing languages


Old English Translator/ Dictionary - Awesome stuff here


Hope that helps people make and create great names.

I base most of my names in Czech, it's really rich language and has soft sounding words as well as hard ones. We translate even some names. There's no John, it's Jan, there's no George, it's Jiří. Also, yes, "ř", it is inexplicable to even some native speakers, but dang doesn't it sound cool. Another thing, we hoard consonants, so you get words like zmrzl (which would translate to "he froze"). You can have a look at Kingdom Come: Deliverance for more.
German is also cool, their composing of words gives good opportunities for naming thing it's literal description without being too obvious.
Obviously, latin is used far and wide and I use it too, I have not been educated in it, so I just randomly translate words and just add different suffixes.
Sometimes it's fun to use gibberish words from foreign songs just as you hear them, not looking for the meaning. Titles of songs sometimes work too. I have for example city named Mannah na Mahna (a city of Mannah on the river of Mahna) based on, you guessed it, mahna mahna from muppet show.
Yet another option is to just change the phonetic sound of word. English is weird about saying certain groups of letters (Sean Bean should rhyme, it is against nature, that that doesn't rhyme), so I just put that english word to google translate as if it was let's say polish and voila. (Granted, this doesn't work with many words, but can be interesting too.)