Fantasy World Building: Names and Places

Name from the outside in

A map is easiest to fill in from the largest shapes to the smallest. Each layer gives you a reason for the names beneath it.

• The world and its continents. A name with a meaning, like Sumarland (Old Norse for "land of summer"), tells you what the first people to arrive thought of the place. Try the World and Continent name generators.
• Kingdoms and empires. Decide who rules where, and in what language. A dark kingdom like Ebonwold or a northern one like Kvarheim sets the tone for everything inside it.
• Landscape. Mountains, rivers, forests and coasts divide the kingdoms, and their names were usually given by whoever lived nearby.
• Settlements. Cities, towns and villages grow up at crossings, harbours and markets.
• The places inside them. Inns, castles, temples, ruins and dungeons come last, and can borrow from everything above.

Working this way means a village called Candleworth sits in a kingdom whose language explains its ending, rather than floating free on the map.

How real place names form

Almost every real place name began as a plain description. Oxford was the ford where oxen crossed. The endings tell you what kind of place it was and who named it:

• -ford, -bridge, -mouth: where a river was crossed or met the sea.
• -ton, -ham, -worth: Old English farmsteads and enclosures.
• -by and -thorpe: Old Norse farms and villages, common in the north and east of England.
• -wick and -wich: from Old English wīc, often a trading place or dairy farm.
• Pen, ben and fell: hills, from Brittonic, Gaelic and Old Norse.

Names also wear down over time. York began as the Roman Eboracum, became the Anglo-Saxon Eoforwic, then the Viking Jórvík, and was smoothed into one syllable. A fantasy name that sounds worn, like the river Scar Beck (a beck is a stream in the north of England), feels older than one that's freshly invented.

Our Fantasy Town, Village and River name generators are built from these real elements, so their results sit naturally on a map: Ferryhaven, Wenlas Water, Pedlar's Law (a law is a rounded hill in Scotland and the north of England).

Give each culture its own sound

The quickest way to make a world feel real is to keep each people's names in the same language. Readers notice the pattern without being told.

• Pick a handful of sounds per culture. Dwarven names here lean on hard consonants and words for depth and stone: Grunzan Deep. Elven names use soft, flowing syllables: Saelavel.
• Reuse the same endings. If one northern kingdom is Kvarheim, its neighbour might be Eldmark, so the -heim and -mark endings feel like they belong to one language family.
• Let borders blur. Real frontiers mix languages. A town on the border can have a name from each side, which is a good source of story.

Tolkien famously worked the other way round, inventing his Elvish languages first and building the names of Middle-earth from them. You don't need a whole language, but a short list of word parts with meanings goes a long way. The Elf City and Dwarf City name generators show the idea in action.

Layer in history

Places with one name and no past feel flat. Give a few of them some history:

• Old names and new. A city renamed by its conquerors still has its old name in the mouths of the locals. Use both, and let characters reveal their loyalties by which one they say.
• Local names and official ones. A mapmaker's name and a villager's name for the same cave can differ, and the difference can be a clue. The Lantern Warren sounds like something the locals called it.
• Names that outlive their meaning. A ruin called The Silted Market of Drownby tells you there was once a village, a market and a flood. The Slighted Towers of Mallorscar uses a real castle word: a slighted castle was deliberately damaged so it couldn't be used again.
• Names after people and events. A few places named after a founder, a battle or a disaster give the map a timeline.

The Ruins Name Generator and Castle Name Generator can add a line of history to each name.

Naming the people

Once a place has a name, its people need one too. Real demonyms are irregular, which is why they sound real: someone from Manchester is a Mancunian, from the Roman name Mancunium, and someone from Glasgow is a Glaswegian.

• Regular endings like -ian, -ish, -er and -i are easy for readers: the Eldmarkers, the people of Kvarheim.
• Irregular ones suggest history. A people might be named after an older form of the place, or after a founder, rather than its current name.
• Self-names and exonyms. Peoples often call themselves something different from what their neighbours call them. That gap is useful when cultures meet.

For individual characters, the D&D name generators cover every race, and the Fantasy Country Name Generator suggests a style for each people.

Common pitfalls, and a simple process

• Apostrophe overload. One apostrophe in a name can mean a sound or a missing letter; three in every name is decoration.
• Unpronounceable names. If you can't say it, readers will rename it in their heads. Say every name out loud.
• Accidental real places. Invented names built from real elements sometimes turn out to exist. Search before you publish.
• Too many similar names. Vary the first letter and the length, so Ebonwold and Eldmark don't share a border.

A process that works: name the world and continents; divide them into kingdoms and give each a language; name the mountains, rivers and forests in those languages; place the towns at crossings and harbours; then add castles, ruins and dungeons with a line of history each. Keep a list as you go. For every layer, see the World-Building name generators, and for cities and taverns, the Places name generators.