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One of the hardest parts of my job is naming things.
And you wouldn’t believe the number of things that need to be named in a fictional work:
Character first and last names and sometimes nicknames and titles
Cities
Towns
Rivers
Mountains
Continents
Imaginary species
Communities
Races
Businesses
Fictional book titles (not to mention the title of the story itself) and movies
Stores & coffee shops
Monster names
Pet names
Endless. Seriously endless.
And every time I run up against a new thing that needs a name, I find myself Googling “how to name a city” or “how to name a continent.”
So I’m writing this tactical checklist for myself as much as for anyone else. So next time I need to name a city or a civilization, I won’t have to Google it. I’ll already have a system in place.
(Just as an aside, I’m focusing on city and town names here, however, many of these strategies could also be used to name other things as well.)
Strategy 1: Consider the immediate context.
Why is your character in this location? Is it to find a lost treasure? Lost Treasure City. Is it to climb a mountain? Great Mountain Town. Is it to meet a mysterious stranger in a bar? Stranger City.
Need a famous example of this technique? Metropolis. Literally “big city.” Or in Latin, “mother city.” It makes sense. Clark Kent is going to fight crime in the big city, as opposed to “Smallville” where he’s from.
Strategy 2: Consider the geographic context.
In real life, many towns, cities, counties, etc. are named after geographic features. Think Springfield, one of the most common town names in the US: “spring” (a place where water wells up from an underground source) and “field” (a open expanse of cleared ground).
Natural Bridge, VA features a big rock sitting horizontal across a gorge which functions as a… you guessed it—natural bridge.
The White Mountains are mountains that are white. The Green mountains are mountains that are green. The Rockies? You guessed it. Mountains that are… rocky.
A few more common examples:
Brookview
Fairview
Greenville
Oakland
Newport
Riverside
Ashland
Portsmouth
Essentially, people aren’t necessarily creative when it comes to naming their surroundings. Think about the landscape—how might the first colonizers/people to see it have reacted?
“Wow, that’s a big rock!” — Big Rock
“What a big sky!” — Big Sky City
“It’s so green here!” — Greenville
A couple fictional examples: Bedford. Castle Rock. Springfield. Hill Valley. Basin City. Eaglewood.
Strategy 3. Consider the historical context.
Now, I know not everyone plots and plans out the entire history of a civilization before drafting a piece of fiction, but sometimes it can help to think about what the history of a specific place might have been—even in vague terms. For example, did it have a king? Or perhaps, the people who first colonized it were loyal to a king? Kingville. Kingston. Kingstown. King Village.
Who was the first mayor? Governor? President?
The most common town name in the US is Washington. Another super common name is Georgetown. Franklin. Baltimore is named after Lord Baltimore.
Another piece of relevant history is where did the first settlers come from originally? There are a lot (LOT) of cities, especially on the East Coast of the US, named after towns and cities in from other countries: Bath and Dover for example (two towns I’ve lived in lol), Lebanon, Greece, Athens, Berlin, Cairo, Chili, Delhi, Lima, New Madrid, Milan, Palermo, Italy, Russia, Tripoli, Versaille, Montpelier, Vienna, New Prague—these are all small towns in the US.
Strategy 4. Consider the indigenous context.
There have been a lot of wars throughout history. A lot of people taking land from other people. And while sometimes places may get renamed, many of the original names get passed on through the generations. Who lived on the land your fictional town is set in first? And what might they have named it? Would it have been translated into a modern language, or would it have kept it’s original name?
Think of places like the Susquenna River, named after the Susquehannock Tribe. Or Big Foot, IL, named for a Potawatomi chief. Or think of Mount Denali/McKinley in Alaska. The name "Denali" is based on the Koyukon name of the mountain, Deenaalee ("the high one") [source].
Note: If you’re using real life indigenous names, make sure you do your research! Understand the history and the meaning behind the words, and only use them if you are fully confident that your use is not disrespectful or appropriative.
Strategy 5. Consider the lingual context.
Perhaps the name “Big Rock” is too boring for you. That’s fair. Invent a language! Or, if you don’t want to go to the work of actually creating a language, consider borrowing from parts of your own language or Latin or another language.
There was a town near where I grew up named Buena Vista. That’s Spanish for Beautiful View. Los Angeles is literally “the angels”. De Roche is French for “of the rock.”
I sometimes take a word I feel represents the town or area in my work, and tack “ville,” “ford,” or “ton” at the end. Or “burg” or “polis” or “land” or “dale”. You can also add: “Spring,” “Falls,” “Beach,” Fort,” “San,” or a directional (North, South, East, West, etc.).
Here’s a helpful list of generic place name parts.
Think Duckberg (Disney). Riverdale. Stepford. Bedford Falls. Toontown. Sunnydale.
Strategy 6. Consider the narrative context.
One of the fun parts of naming things is considering their deeper meaning within the context of the story. This might mean choosing a name that fits with a theme of the work, or that represents something symbolic. It may also function as an analogy or allegory.
And you can make it obvious, like naming a town “Ethicsville” or you could make it more subtle—for example, “ethics” in Hungarian is “etika.” So a town could be called “Etika” or “Etikaton” or “Etika Falls.”
A really simple example of this is Gotham City from Batman. “Gotham” technically means ‘homestead where goats are kept,’ however, it was also used as a nickname for New York City—which creates easy parallels when using a story to interrogate concepts of crime, poverty, and heroism.
Or consider Sunnydale from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This cheerful town name (based on a generic idea of a California town), creates a deep sense of irony when paired with the fact that it’s set on a “Hellmouth” and pretty much overrun with vampires.
Strategy 7. Use a generator.
There are tons of online “whatever” generators. Fantasy name generators. Place name generators. Character name generators. Book title generators. Writing prompt generators. Pet name generators. Some have filters so you can use, for example, to limit the number of characters in a word.
This particular website has dozens of different types of generators for all kinds of things.
I’ve also used this one a few times. It has many filters.
This one does more realistic names. Or you could try this one just for kicks.
I’m a discovery writer, so I don’t plan out much ahead when I’m working on a manuscript. Typically, I will use random name generators when I need a name quick and it’s not particularly important to whatever I’m working on. Like, a character randomly mentioning the name of her hometown. Doesn’t matter, won’t come up again, so a random name generator is perfect. But I’ll spend a lot more time on important names—cities that appear repeatedly for example, or that play an important thematic role even if the character never ends up going there (like a historical city or something).
Strategy 8. Wing it.
There are tons of strategies if you just want to wing it. I once pulled out a star map and smacked my finger down on a random spot to pick a planet name. You could also pick up a phone book and point to a random person and read their address. This is also a great tactic for finding ideas for first names and last names.
You can bang on your keyboard and then try to make the result into a word. Let your cat or your kid bang on your keyboard.
Look at a real map and just pick a name.
Keep a notebook of cool names you encounter when reading the news, playing video games, or meeting new people in real life.
Pick a word and make an anagram. Want to name your city, Really Big? How about “Beragilly”?
Or go to Reddit and read through some ideas other people have. Here are a few discussion threads: one, two, three, and four.
In the grand scheme of things, I think you should name your town or city whatever you want. Whatever you come up with, there’s probably something weirder that already exists.
Like:
Normal, IL.
Hell, MI.
Hell for Certain, KY.
Satan’s Kingdom, MA.
Rough and Ready, CA.
Bacon Level, AL.
Random Lake, WY.
Blueball, DE.
Why, Arizona.
Whynot, MS.
Bread Loaf, VT.
Accident, MD.
Nameless, TN.
Hot Coffee, MS.
Deadhorse, AK.
ZZyxx, CA.
A couple final thoughts. First off, keep in mind, if it’s really getting in the way of finishing a project, you can always change the name during editing.
Secondly, make sure you google the name you choose to make sure that is either super common, or not already used by someone really famous. Don’t name your fictional school “Hogwarts.” Don’t name your fictional city “Gotham.” Don’t name your super cheerful small town “Disneyville.” And always double check, just to be safe, because there are tons of brands and stories out there that you might not be familiar with.
My general rule of thumb is: if it’s big enough for a Wikipedia page, then I pick a different name.
Finally, I think it can be easy to get really hung up on things like place names. But the truth is, a bad place name is unlikely to ruin your work (unless you name it Disney—seriously don’t do that). And bad is relative. I just like to think of it as “adding character.” It’s more important to finish a project than it is to get everything absolutely, perfectly right.
Keep writing!