Mt Doom sounds like an Australian place name. We tend to have a lot of mountains with names reflecting how terrible the land was for the first white explorers. "Mount Disappointment" "Mount Despair," "Never Never," "Mount Buggery" "Nullabor" Most of these names are basically named by explorers being all "Damnit! More of this blasted country"
"Mount Buggery" could be used as an alternative title for Brokeback Mountain...now I wonder how that name came about? We have some funny place names in Canada too...my favorite is Dildo, Newfoundland and Come By Chance is a very close second.
+Sarah Gray Mount Buggery was named that by a mountain climbers society. It is a long ridge of sharp virtual rocks. Too difficult to climb and is long so you have to take days out of your way to go around it.
David Hedges - That's interesting, I'd've thought it was Aboriginal, but maybe whoever came up with that knew a bit about Aboriginal language style and picked Latin that followed a similar style.
If you catch the Iberian Peninsula tradition of naming things you can actually make a pretty large picture of naming cities, countries, etc, since you could name your places whatever the people who live there believe in.
You wanna talk about dumb placenames, my state of Washington is often confused with the city of Washington D.C. This name was chosen over Columbia because they didn't want people to confuse it with... the District of Columbia.
@@Envy_May Not quite. "Eng" means "not much room to move in-between", as with a corridor, or the room between two coasts if you only consider the land to be something you can build and live on. "Hier ist es sehr eng" means you don't have much room.
M productions Up in Lapland. Wife and I took a roadtrip through the north recently. I almost shat myself when I saw the name. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä My current fluency is between 'house plant' and 'particularly verbose dog,' so don't ask for pronunciation!
I dunno about the others but the dead sea is called that cause it's too salty for things to live in it. Its not alive, so it's dead. And a sea. Boom Dead Sea
@@janpiorko3809 I learned it as the Dead Sea so I guess it can be both. I always thought it was weird that it got to be a sea but the great lakes r just lakes and they're way bigger. But yeah I learned it was a sea, not a lake
You know whats funny? The name Australia comes from the Latin term "Terra Australis" does mean "Earth southern", while the name Austria comes from the old-german word austar, which means eastern. I just love how the names are similar and different at once.
except Austria is Osterreich which literally means the "Eastern reich" or "Eastern Land/kingdom" due to it being the easternmost land on the old Holy Roman Empire
Earth southern? lol what? You mean southern land, right? Latin "terra" not only means Earth, but also country, region, surface or soil. And Austria doesn't come from austar, Austria is a phonetic (and a little bit latinized) transcription of old German "Ostarrichi", which is suspiciously similar to modern-day term "Österreich". I do like this random similarity as well, though.
9:18 Fun fact, the Greeks coined the term Barbarians when speaking of people outside of Greece, after the Thracian people in the north because when the Thracians spoke their language, all the Greeks could hear was "Bar-Bar-Bar". See, I knew my political philosophy class in college would come in handy. Take that, dad.
It was similar when the Slavs encountered the Germans. They could not understand a single word they said so they called them 'Niemcy', The mute people.
@@MiksusCraft Hammerfell, previously Volenfell. The same applies to many other places throughout Elder Scrolls lore. But Hammerfell and Volenfell are essentially the exact same thing, which is interesting I think.
I just hate the fucking spelling because it BEGS you to NOT pronounce it EXACTLY like "elsewhere", but there's no possible alternative pronunciation with that spelling
I accidentally followed this in one of my early worldbuilding attempts. A random name generator had given me an alien species name "Klaxillon." So I figured I'd run with that and lean on the X an double L as being common to their language. This lead to the name of their capitol city "Xhinrell," and I decided that this city was built on a giant city-sized tree said to be their goddess Rell. From here, it made sense that Xhinrell would mean "Upon Rell." So suddenly I had a word, "xhin," which meant "Upon" or "On top of," and a religious background and history behind the city. Eventually I ended up coming up with a bustling spaceport city as well, I can't recall the name but it essentially translated to a somewhat rude way of saying "City of Others," reflecting the highly xenophobic nature of this race.
But if it's Greek, it's pronounced "Zin rell". If there are no Greeks in your world, it can be called "Ex in rell". My god of death is Xox, but not Zoz, or Zox, but "Ex Ox", two hard syllables, like Red Sox. I wonder if that's why his realm is called Bahstin ?
I would argue that Mt. Doom is not a bad name... even if "no evil was present" it's a volcanic land filled with `dread and desolation` ... the name doom fits very well as in `if you go there it will be your doom` or something absolutely terrible and devastating happened here: doom... .... pretty much like the real world example: The Dead Sea... if it was a D&D world you would think: "oh.. necromancers or zombies and/or very evil things" .... but it reality it just means: It's a sea and nothing lives in it.
blablubb and Gabriel are 1000% right. The dead sea where no animals live and the life-endangering, harsh and likely-to-kill Death Valley would absolutely pass for something extremely ominous and dark in a world where evil supernatural entities exist, but in the real world, nobody bats an eye, which leads me to think Mt. Doom is no more of a cliche or stupid name than either of those: if there were a Mt Doom irl, for whatever reason, people would likely just roll with it.
totally not jeff I never thought about it that way. You're probably right: "doom" has connotations of fate, and the fact that it was frodo's fate to bring the ring to the mountain (and fate in general) is a huge theme in the story.
Isn't Mt. Doom an exonym? I always figured that's what the people outside of Mordor called that giant evil fiery volcano, while its real lore name was Orodruin. I mean yeah it sounds dumb but so does "the Land of People" when you think about it.
Yeah, you're right. It's also called Amon Amarth in Sindarin. The whole thing with Mount Doom is more a less a joke (I still don't care for the name but it's not bad in sense of realism), and I don't think it came off that way in the video. That's my bad in presentation.
Better than, using an old Latin word, they invented, because they fucked up across the Rhein. And needed reason so they can conquer the Celts in France, but excuse because they couldn't conquer over the Rhein. So they just said, that are completely other people and they are completely barbaric and not worth conquering. And it's not land of the people it's more like: the Land of the People who speak German.
Our moon's name is Luna, though, and our sun's name is Sol. (Coincidentally, "Luna" also means "Moon" in russian and, probably, several other languages, and something similar probably goes with "Sol" and "sun") But yeah, dumb names are everywhere, we just usually can't really understand the connotation due to multiple languages we speak.
That's why they're extinct the gods got real tired of their bad names and killed em, saying it was because they were using god magic, that one Snow Elf propaganda
@@Undivided-X that’s true but if you’re writing a book or planning on sharing this world then it’s generally best to cater it to the limitations of your audience. If your world is apart of an English franchise then keeping it pronounceable to English speakers is a given. Same goes if it were to be a Xhosa franchise, it should be tailored to Xhosa speakers.
@@Undivided-X i can pronounce Xhosa words after looking up the pronunciations and just learning,even after nearly ten years i cannot pronounce fucking Mzinchaleft or Irkngthand.
@@Stoneworks depends, is that name a derivative of the original title? Also, I have kind of a nitpick about your point with Winterfell that you could clarify for me, if you feel like it: why's it so impossible that Winterfell is the Common Tongue derivative of the name in an ancient northern language? The books never specify whether it is or not, so it seems like you're making an assumption. I can see Winterfell being a translation, simply because canonically, the rulers of the land were once referred to as Kings of Winter in that old tongue, and in later years the title has become Kings of the North with the slow introduction of the Common Tongue; so clearly there's a precedence of evolving language in that specific region. I could have completely missed the mark on what you're trying to say though, so take it easy on me if I have please c:
@@Stoneworks I guess what I'm ultimately asking, from where are you getting the idea that Winterfell's name has never changed? Sure you never hear of it mentioned by any other name, but people alive today don't refer to Boston as its original title.
@@Stoneworks that's the Arabic version of Alexandria, so, yes, it counts. Btw, Kandahar, Afghanistan was also named Alexandria after Alexander the great.
I need to make notecards of the points or something for DND, this is good information for world building. In the mean time, since I need to find the timestamps anyways, here is that info for everyone else. 1:52 Names Start as Descriptions of the Area 2:57 Place Names Start As 5:54 Name Evolution 13:08 Things you can do to a word 16:20 Natural Toponymy 16:46 Making Up Place Names I sure hope I got them all, I just skimmed through instead of re-watching entirely
Nice video! I do custom worlds for all the rpgs I run. My dwarven City's typically all start with Dahn, which translates roughly to "palace of" or "house of" and end with the ruler of that area, like Dahn Sthern for the city of king Sthern. The name changes on coronation days, and while sometimes the old name still gets thrown around by other races, dwarven cultures in my worlds see it as incredibly rude to refer to someone's rightful home as anothers. It's actually been used twice in my games, this bit of trivia. Once my players insulted a baron accidentally, and the second time they heard a traveling dwarf refer to the city of Dahn Talad, and realized that the old king had apparently been usurped which was a major change in their quest.
Long Island Dead Sea Red Sea Cape of Good Hope Black Sea Death Valley False Bay North Sea Governor's Island The Rockies Great Plains Ivory Coast Gold Coast Easter Island Christmas Island Spices Island McDonald's Island Isle of Man The Outback North Island South Island Great Bear Lake Great Slave Lake Newfoundland Rocky Mountains Great Salt Lake Kingston Port Royal Cape Horn Georgetown Hammerfest Lake Van Freetown Porto Novo (New Port) Great Rift Valley Libreville Brazzavile Queensland Christchurch Northern Territory Isn't it good to hear these place name that really are so realistic with no or less etymology and topoynmy?
Half of these are the product of colonization and therefore don't have the time nor exposure to other languages to change. I agree, realistic and good, however if you name every place in your world like this, you're gonna get a lot of shit. (Also Isle of Man is actually Mann and comes from the Manx word for Island, Vannin)
@@Stoneworks, so... naming half of the places like that, while giving more exotic names to the rest, would indicate that half of the world was (rather) recently colonized, wouldn't it?
The names "Great Bear Lake" and "Great Slave Lake" may sound on the surface like they have no etymology or toponymy, but both actually do have a history. Great Bear Lake was originally named "Sahtu" by the people who lived on its shores, which means "Grizzly Bear Waters", or something to that effect. Thus, the name isn't really a coloniser's name, it's actually a translation of the original. I believe the video mentioned something about how newly-arriving people sometimes translate and keep using pre-existing place names... Great Slave Lake was named for the people who lived on its shores, the Dene. The Dene were derogatorily referred to as "slaves" by their traditional enemies, the Cree. Since French (Quebecois) fur traders mainly hired Cree guides, they started calling the Dene esclaves, and the British followed suit, calling them the Slavey. I'm sure the Dene used to have (and maybe still have) a name for it in their own language, but no matter how hard I try I literally cannot find out what it is/was. I can add a bit about Newfoundland too. Although you can clearly see it's spelled "New Found Land" NOBODY pronounces it that way. It's "Newfnland", or even "Newfnlund" (which is the wrong way of pronouncing it, as any Newfie will tell you). Once again, it DOES have a history, it's just not all that long.
@Valami Izé Crime Alley is part of the neighborhood called Park Row. 'Crime Alley' is a name given to the long alleyway running the area after the relatively wealthy Park Row fell into poverty and urban decay. Some stories imply or state this only began happening around the murder of the Wayne's but quickly escalated after that along with the growing corruption and suffering in the rest of the city. Which plays rather well into the psychology of a young Bruce Wayne to see his world literally become a darker place after his parents deaths; even though as an adult he knows intellectually it wasn't perhaps all that connected.
1:47 Name Start As Descriptions of the Area 2:47 Place Name start as 5:00 Name Evolution 12:31 Things you can do to a word 15:54 Natural Toponymy 16:25 Making Up Place Names
Isn't there a mountain on earth called "Devil's Mountain"? Not to mention "Death Valley" ? I think as long as the location itself is foreboding, it fits!
Yeah, but if you place it in "obvious bad guy lands", it just feels cheap. Instead, imagine what it would mean if mount Doom was placed in the Shire. The contrast between the two would signify that the foot of the volcano is safe and a perfect place for living, but the peak is dangerous and you beter stay away. Or the naming could be the result of local folklore.
Death Valley got its English name (it was called Maahunu by the natives there) because a group of prospectors died while traveling through it, so it's very much an example of "giving a perceived bad place a bad name."
Regarding Winterfell, and really, basically every other place in Westeros, There's only been a single language change since Any real settlement of man was founded in Westeros, and that's when the Andals came and brought their language. Winterfell was named that for a reason (Supposedly built on the location of the final battle of the War for the Dawn, so 'Winter' (The Others) 'fell' (died) there. Westerosi are shown the be extremely prideful and attached to their great castles and such, so there's never been any onus for the name to change. Besides that, the world of ice and fire has essentially stagnated in every way for hundreds of year, shown primarily by the fact they've been in the medieval ages for thousands of years on end with no signs of a pseudo renaissance to jumpstart technology again. Places changing names would go against that.
Also all this is the mythical history of the place not the real history. The name could have changed. GRRM was clear that the World of ice and fire is not the History but history written by people of Westeros as they know it. How Winterfell came to be or if the Long Night happened at all is not that certain. He said that we will have to wait for the Grimarilion for the true history that one will be written by Maester Martin not Maester Yandel.
I don't think you grasp the world of a song of ice and fire well enough to have complaints about the name especially of Winterfell... it's like you know nothing of real world contexts and history GRRM painstakingly researched the original names of British and overall European forts, castles, landmarks and such to serve as a base for his world, you criticism is quite childish and screams "I've never read the book nor have I thought deeply into this but allow me to whine about things i've barely thought about"
It is true that the names dont change, but technology obviously dies in great ways, in the dawn age the people lived in the stone age, later came the age of heroes in wich bronze was develop and the first ment invaded westeros, at the end of this period the rise and fall of Ghil happened, the Andal culture was created in northern essos and Valyria started to rise. The age of heroes ended after the Andal invasion wich brough iron to westeros, there has also been recent changes like Braavos creating the arsenal, a giant favtory in wich a ship can be created every day and tyrosh discivering how to make advanced dyes, in fact, all of western essos is in reinasance levels of technology.
I always start with some form of ‘-place,’ loose syllables, then corrupt it for a minute, then pick my favorite step of the corruption, repeat until I get one I really like. Arachnia -> Aracha -> Aeracha -> Aeraka -> Aerak -> Erak -> Erakia Aeraka -> Eraka -> Teraka -> Terak -> Tezak -> Tezark Tezak & Eraka, a fishing hamlet with spider people.
In the Netherlands there is a town called zevenhuizen it means "seven houses" .... it's a lot bigger now. there is another town called doodstil, most people think its dood(dead) stil ( quiet) but actually it's dood's (Death's) til ( old word for bridge)
I always thought that all the ones ending in "dam" are a reference to actual dams that were built there, is this wrong? There are also many ending in "recht" but I can't find any dutch root that is directly using that.
@@admontblanc correct damming in a river is a great way to get an area to keep fish stock and water powered mills and other benefits to humans ( not so much to the enviroment). so for example the river Amstel -> amstelveen ( Amstel-fenn) and Amsterdam ( should be Amstelerdam but lazy people = name shortening) and the river Rotte and Rotterdam about recht I have no clue but dutch wikipedia page on Utrecht has this ( translated) : trecht is based on the latin trajectum which meant a place where the river rhine was able to be waded through and crossed, the U in Utrecht stands for uut which in old dutch for downstream. the name Utrecht should therefore be interprented as Downstream from the crossing that would make other -trecht cities referring to places along the Rhine or perhaps other rivers where in pre-modern times there was a natural crossing. other common endings are veld ( field) meer ( lake) beek (brook/stream) veer ( ferry) bosch/bos ( old dutch and dutch for forrest) dorp ( village/town) donk ( raised ground to keep things built on it safe from floods)
@@gerbenvanessen I knew there had to be a sense for the "trecht"/"recht" thing, the "dam" ones were easy to figure since you have a lot of cities that literally needed to be dammed around before much could be built, and from what I have read before the damming projects were started most coastal Netherlands was swampy deltas. Utrecht, but I also been near Zwindrecht, and there are at least a couple others like that I don't rememebr at the moment, that's why I asked.
@@admontblanc I just looked up dutch wikipedia for zwijndrecht and aparently its old frankish and old dutch not trecht but similar. Zwijn in modern dutch means boar but in zwijndrecht Swinen in old frankish means water flowing away during low tide while Drecht is still a bit related to trecht but in old west dutch it came to mean drift. of the river so zwijndrecht means somehing along the lines of "bend in the river that can be crossed at low tide" ( according to dutch wikipedia page on zwijndrecht)
@@gerbenvanessen lol, that's such a great way to name places, not only they described a land feature, they made sure it had useful information about it encoded. Anyway, thanks for this.
My favorite name origin is why my state is called "Yucatán" Turns out when the spanish colonizers reached what is now called the Yucatán Peninsula they had the decency of asking the native mayans how the land was called, the natives answered "Yuuk ak katan" which roughly translates to "I can´t understand you..." or "I don´t speak your language"
Well, in Tolkien’s work he used Doom to mean fate, more or less. Such as the Valar’s council the Ring of Doom. And Elrond says in Fellowship, ‘We are all bound by this one fate; this one doom’ He invokes any more ancient form of the word fate, and we can know he does since his native tongue is Quenya.
This is something that happens when you are knowledgeable in several languages (as Tolkien was) and the language you're speaking most of the time lacks a specific word found in others. For instance, the word "Doom" does not exist in Spanish; destiny or fate are similar enough. Der, die, and das do not exist in English, because German is gendered and English isn't.
'when your a fan of the irl Medieval Kingdom of Aragon in the 15th century Ad, but when ever you start to talk about their naval Mediterranean empire people think your talking about 'King Aragon'
Oh, so _that's_ why everyone in French thought that naming "Eragon" a fantasy book series about dragons, with an ostentatious dragon on the cover, was an *extremely lazy, obvious and cheesy move* and _not_ subtle at all. _Because we don't stress the same syllables!_
We also have a book series from a local author that launched a couple years before Eragon, called "Amos Daragon: the mask-wearer", literally because "D'Aragon" sounds ostensibly "fantasy-ish" in French. It sounds explicitly like "dragon". That series is also a bit cheesy, though it has a cult-series status due to being local and teaching kids that killing all gods is a good thing for the world.
Thank you for this video! Toponymy and etymology is something that on the surface seems rather unimportant, but actually is one of the major cornerstones of world-building. I, for example, don't like the classic fantasy mish-mash, when in some games or books you have Vladimir, Jean, George, Carlos and Siegfried all living in one village, or when writers use in their made-up worlds "Earth-Bound" names like Christian, Brittany etc. It also can be the opposite with ridiculous names like Aeneryona Tzalanthyous of Ceald Fiolosri. I can literally spend hours thinking of a name even when it's only some minor town or character. It's actually the thing that I enjoy the most out of worldbuilding because really good names can tell entire stories on their own. Personally, I find the names of kingdoms and nations the hardest. Some naming advice: Sometimes it's good (especially in case of minor villages and towns) to not be afraid and just take the name of an already existing place and perhaps slightly twist it. You don't need to be 100% original. Same goes for noble houses, George Martin has his Targaryens and Baratheons but also Starks, Blackwoods, Gardeners and Tyrells.
Yes! I completely agree on how important it is. One thing I find especially interesting, and unfortunately rare, is how authors and world builders can use names to subvert audience expectations. I was playing D&D with my lowish level group and they came across a high Elven society, which I (shamefully) haven't put enough thought into to make it different enough from the Tolkien cliché, but I have worked on its langauge. I had one character tell them the name of the first elven town they were about to see, and he said it was "Tsücheqdeo", and let them see how it was written (૬દ્દ'૭દ્દ'ઠ, in Gujarati script, if you're interested). They, being a chaotic group that is fond of raiding, decided that they would ransack the town. But upon seeing the town and how it was a well defended and well built, they decided not to. As it turns out, they thought it would be a poor (and I hate to say) rural-African-style village based on the name itself. They said that if I named it like "Valyria or something", they wouldn't have even thought about it. But because they, being white Americans, were used to Greco-Roman toponymy being "high and elegant" and anything resembling African languages (which my Elven one is based on) being lowly and poor, they found themselves in a sort of... culture shock I guess. I loved this, and I think it positively challenged their way of thinking. It was reinforced when they did a quest about a commoner trying to become a noble, and the commoner was actively practicing this high Elven, african-inspired language. Sorry for the long paragraph, but I feel very passionate about this, but I 100% agree that language is an effective and powerful tool that can sometimes make or break the world building.
That's very interesting. It also tackles one thing that can enormously help world-building and that's the knowledge of other languages. If for example, an American who only speaks English decides to make a Germany-inspired kingdom it will most likely look far worse than if someone who actually can speak German did it. That's generalization, of course, if that hypothetical American puts enough effort into his creation, it can turn out amazing.
ShtyepaanCZ something I've learned when making languages, Go by the Script first, it's counterintuitive I know but, Visuals are key to some languages, imagine it's primitiveness by the complexity of it's designs, Late Egyptian vs Early Sumerian is a great example. A language with fewer primitive like symbols will likely have a well structured Lingual side to it. Same goes with having more primitive looking symbols.
But in the real world you could easily end up having Ioannis, Thorsten, Katinka, and Moses living together in a village. Many names cross borders, due to cultural exchange, trade, religion and so forth. It's not necessarily unrealistic. Something you probably shouldn't do is to have Carlos living with Charles and Karl, as they are three versions of the same name. Each culture has their own version of the name, and as such there is no reason to use the other versions. But even this is sometimes subverted. It's for example not to uncommon here in Denmark to have both Johannes, Hans, Jon, Jens, and John which are all different language's versions of the same name, but which have all gained popularity.
This was incredibly informative and well done. I was already doing a lot of the things you recommended intuitively, but descriptive place names often felt lazy to me. Yet, they're very realistic. Makes me feel a lot better about using them.
Ossoume video! Randomly browsing and came across this after looking up some novel making guides and tips. After seeing how you worked with arachnid to make a location/places name, I was like "...Yes, all those years of bad spelling, and failed english classes.. I can use it here." But seriously your humor made me a fan, great editing also.
Very interesting. Funnily enough, I remember coming across Eragon in my school library as a child. I instantly noticed the Dragon/Eragon connection to the point that I misread it as Dragon. I was 9 at the time.
Yeah, but I'm talking about the dragon-riding dude named Eragon. I think Christopher Paolini named him this because it sounds High European, like Aragon, and because it's close to the word dragon.
Aragon still exists, it only names its core territory though. It's an autonomous community inside of Spain (fun fact: one of the many titles of the King, and his second one in terms of importance, is "King of Aragon"
@@pupinator98 yup now its all comeing togheter. I was curious about that, why everyone jokeing about it in comments and I don't know what is this. I don't know this could be everythig but I think english people would have problem with for example "Nowa Wieś Wielka" or somethig like "Pszczyna"
Thanks - I enjoyed this! I’ve never had a problem with “Mount Doom” myself, but I always think Hobbiton is a bit of a cop out. It would make sense for other races to refer to “Hobbit Town” but not the hobbits.
@@Stoneworks To me, JRR the Tol-father gets a pass. Names that would send me into epileptic cringe-fits for *anybody* else, *anybody*, skate right by because JRRT was first. Whereas GRRM's arbyrtray Y's stuck yn just about everi name ys a byt wyerd to myeiey. But hey, it's all good. I have an almost fetishistic refusal to use the letters Z, Q, and even A (unless I have to, and then 1 A per name...) and NO GODDAMN RANDOM APO'STROP'HE'S! That's what really does my head in, and I love that Neal Stephenson lampshades this crap in _Reamde._ An amazing author, one of my very favorites, and an excellent, interesting book. Anyway, I can't abide that standard tendency to name people and places with only A's and some Z's for company...maybe a Q in there, next to a hellspawned random apostrophe; I don't know how so many other just glide by a name like Abshazzacaazzanzanar and think it works; looks like a man accidentally sneezed an onomatopoeia on his keyboard. So yes, the R'aqndamar N'amezz of Ba'ad Fa'nn'tass'eee Nyuovel'zz' infuriates me so much I can feel the good-taste-center of my soul bleed. Just leave Hobbiton, the Shire, Mount Doom, et al alone, okay? Aliorum iudicio permulta nobis et facienda et non facienda et mutanda et corrigenda sunt, Mr. Language Guy. Yeah. I shall be content spackling my worlds with Latinoid names, whether you judge me pretentio maximus or not. After all, de gustibus non est disputandum. In utterly sane seriousness, thanks for a very interesting video. You helped fill in a number of holes for me about good place-names, so cheers. Actually, Stephen Brust in his Dumas-inspired prequels to the Jhereg series has an excellent scene about how placenames, detailing how over the centuries, a bridge called called "The Old Bridge" ends up, roughly, Altebrueckenpontyfordabrygganwyk Bridge; that one passage taught me a lot about how placenames work.
I agree. About “Hobbiton”. But we also should remember that Tolkien invented that name when his story was meant as an oral story. It’s homely and easy to remember for children. And I guess the name just stuck!
Something that happened in my area. In two cases three settlements had the same name. I'm assuming that only became a problem when the common traveler was able to travel further than before. In one case all three settlements were on different rivers, so an at the
I have to disagree with you point about Mt. Doom. Tolkien used the traditional Anglo-Saxon meaning of the word Doom, meaning Judgement or decision. Excellent video however.
Put this video on to listen to in the background while I made a sandwich, and I'm still sitting here with an empty plate. Video completely captivated my attention, good job.
Thank you so much for all the information and advice, it is very helpful and I intend to put it to effect immediately. I appreciate all the advice and hope to see more from you in the future!
you got the name for rhode island wrong, rhode island is named “rhode island” because when settlers came to one of the islands in Narraganset bay they thought it looked like rhodes in greece, and eventually it spread to the whole state
Concerning Winterfell, it is likely that it was suddenly renamed. Given that the Stark words are “winter is coming”, the home of the Starks is logically the place where winter came (or fell)
I love that you pronounced Llantysilio pretty well! I also love how you make and present your videos to keep me engaged, and I learn a lot from them. Thank you for your fantastic content!
A fell, geographically, is a high barren hill type thing...which is exactly what Winterfell looks to be if you take out all the castley bits. I'm surprised nobody (that I've seen) in the comments has pointed that out yet.
@@edubblesspirit AFAIK cartographers couldn't get the native name for Mt. Everest because Nepal and Tibet didn't allow access to foreigners, so they named it after colonel Everest, who didn't want his name on the mountain but couldn't come up with a better idea, therefore it stayed Mt Everest.
This video was very helpful. I got a lot of crap in one my early D&D campaigns for naming a town Riverun (pronounced river-run) in that it sounded incredibly unoriginal. In my defense the town was built along the banks on the river with a series of bridges connecting sides to one another with a large bridge in the middle that was a commerce hub. The town was also the central hub of trade centered around the major river flowing from northern kingdoms to southern kingdoms. So the structure of the town running along the banks of the river and some time constraints became the town Riverun. This video both solidified my theory on naming as well as gave me some good inspiration. Thanks!
@@kenobi6257 I know!!!! In my defense this was before I read ASOIAF. No one said I was copying George RR Martin but they said it was lame and lacked creativity. So I had to explain my theory on how towns and cities were named. The table wasn't satisfied but then again it wasn't their campaign or story. They had to deal with it. People will nitpick anything that they can.
@@SV-og2rq Well, I got my own super cool idea in my head of a land called Elyria... until I noticed that one of the less important Valyrian cities had that name xD so don't feel bad about it. I'd love to do one of those campaigns, but I never had the kind of friends to do it xD
@@kenobi6257 the nice thing about the name elyria is that it's so ambiguous yet distinctly elvish that you could get away with it. Someone might notice that it bears the same name as an area in ASOIAF but one could also notice that theres a game called chronicals of elyria, the name is used in other fantasy worlds and is even a town in Ohio. A good table shouldn't put you down for name choice but instead be invested and captivated in the world that you create. Also I have had issues recently with finding a good table since I've recently relocated but theres a local game shop that helps with connecting players for the purpose of tabletop games.
I am a linguistics student and during my first semester, our professor walked across the room repeating the sentence "Welsh is NOT english". I live in Southeastern Europe where this isn't exactly common knowledge. Then, she made us try to pronounce that welsh word you showed in order to really make us understand that the Celtic language fakily is unique. Your video gave me flashbacks fo that cursed lecture.
I know this is old for you but, this reminds me of the name history of the town I live in, it used to be a place where nobels would travel through from scotland to london, it was the easiest, quickest and "safest" route, and bandits knew that, so they began murdering them, so much so that the nobels asked them to stop and said they would pay them to stop murdering them there and to let them pass. So the town was named Murder Path....Now it's changed over the years obviously to Morpeth xD
That was darn good. Makes me think that step one is give everything a name in English (Jeffs Well) , then use the sounds to create a feeling you want (Guiffendal: Guiff is Jeff, en is genative, dal is hole, but dalwas would be well, water hole, but the was gets dropped ). Couple six or 8 place names, and you have your conlang started.
Speaking of names for Germany, when I took Italian lessons in Italy, they taught me to call it Tedesco, instead of Alemania I learned from my Mexican parents, or Germany in school. Weirdly, my cross street growing up was Alemany.
I created a world with names called Shuuana, Stantoos, R'Stralce, Elus, Tradmart, Triest Plains, Sethlands, Luding Mountains. Such memories.... Thank you for the video, I think i will resume working on my world.
I must say as a native german speaker that your pronounciation of german words are top notch in contrast with what i've heard so far from other anglophone content creators :) Very good content, you help me a lot with writer's block!
Something else this video made me think of, particularly with the Suraknit example, is that it is a good idea to think about the race that these words originate from and how they vocalize. The name Suraknit works particularly well, because I would imagine an arachnid race would have a very clicky, hissy sounding language. Think about the creature's actual mouth/tongue/throat and how they would form sounds. Something with no lips can't make an M sound, and something with hard mandibles would click a lot. Maybe the written form of the language in English letters is only an approximation of how their unique letters are pronounced. Maybe the KN in Suraknit is actually a rapid triple throat-click that no human could actually do. Go nuts, after all, not all human languages translate perfectly into the English alphabet, and we all have the same anatomy. A good example of this is the way Lovecraft described how to pronounce Cthulhu, or rather, how one would approximate pronouncing it, as he said it's not something a human would be able to say properly.
Stoneworks That could even become part of another layer of lore, as a location can have multiple names depending on language. Like how we have Deutschland/Germany, or Nihon/Japan. Perhaps over the years native traders just get used to using the alternate name with foreigners and it starts to be officially adopted.
I have a question. I am writing a fantasy story in an industrial revolution setting. A lot of the languages people speak are real languages, but with name changes (for example Hindi's name is changed to Suvarnami because that's the name of the place). A big thing about the population is that the main beliefe of the world is that the continents are the corpses of the gods. So one kingdom's name is Kolani which literally means corpse, because it's founder was extremely cycnical as a person. Most other names have some basis around that beliefe, would you say that this is too unrealistic if a naming convention?
This reminds me of what I thought when I was writing one of my first complete worlds. The city was literally just a place with large walls that kept the poor from the rich and the rich from the poor. Those walls just so happened to be ring shaped. So it was called "Ring City" in the worlds language. The large area with ruins was called "The Ruins" also in the worlds language. Even the world it self had a simple name (which I'm honestly slightly more proud of) it was a world between life and death so it was called: "the place NEARER to death" originally, was then shortened to Nearer eventually, but because of accents and time it became "Nayar" which sounded the same and Nay just happened to mean dark which the world was always. This also lead to the suffix -ar meaning a place that was being referred to (which is a backwards way for a morphim to come to be but I think it made sense). So the name went from: "the land nearer to death" to be "Nayar: Dark Place"
Thanks for this! I found it entirely by accident and was a bit ho-hum as I don't intend to create or name any fantasy place, but you hooked me with "Exeter"; I like how you explained how names change and the [forgot the terms] how people call themselves and what others call them. Given me a few things to look up and explore, so thank you for broadening my horizons!
My great grandfather built a house in a place called Utjeha (in Montenegro). The literal translation for Utjeha would be uh consolation (there's probably a simpler word but I can't think of anything, you get the gist). Now the whole place is pretty much centered around the beach there, most of the buildings there are summer houses or hotels, it's more tourist spot that settlement. The place got it's name basically... from a bar (but like wow, a bar/pub straight up called consolation). Before all of the aforementioned buildings were built, that bar was basically the only thing there, so whenever people went to that beach (which does have an official name but nobody uses it and the fact that I don't even know what it is should say enough) they'd just refer to it by the name of the bar. I don't even think the bar still exists but the place to this day carries it's name, which I find kinda cool
Funny coincidence at 3:47 - I have a borough in my world building named very simple after a guy named Harold, who rebuild it after over a decade of slumification. 😅 The residents called it "Halville" as a thank-you tribute to him. 😊
In my story, the world got rebuilt, and Florida because Disyold with the capital Walt. Why? _Walt_ _Dis_ ney W _o_ r _ld._ It’s the only one in my book with a good name which is why I’m watching this video.
In Iceland, almost every place name is easily understood by the population, Reykjavík-Smokey Cove, Egilsstaðir-the place of Egill. Just wanted to let you know that I absolutely agree with you.
Hi man, i'm from brazil and thanks to you i'll have to spend at least a month renaming a lot of the magnificent places i created in my RPG. And don't get it wrong, I'm really thanking you, your video was sensational and inspired me to have this job to improve my world
To rewrite this so it's a bit easier on the eyes ... Örathäön (using German-style umlauts) Simplified: Urathaion, Urathaon. Further simplification: Urathion. It's not too complicated of a word ... to me, it's just a matter of understanding the sounds and how they can be rewritten without deviating too far from the original. The appearance of the word changes, and of course pronunciation will change at least slightly as well, resulting in something that's easier to pronounce and easier to spell. That's how I tackle the puzzle, anyway. :D
2:43 if you are interested in what is said here: "The enemy was spotted" or "an enemy is spotted in the rear" in Russian languege or something like that. (I had a huge trouble in the begining and may have mistaken)
Aragorn sounds explicitly like "dragon". So does the "Aragon" spanish place and family name. Everyone in French thought that naming "Eragon" a fantasy book series about dragons, with an ostentatious dragon on the cover, was an extremely lazy, obvious and cheesy move and not subtle at all. The books and the movie apparently had very little success outside of the USA. Nobody here even thought that this thing was ever actually popular. Apparently it's because we don't stress the same syllables when pronouncing "Eragon"? We have a book series from a local author that launched a couple years before Eragon, called "Amos Daragon", literally because that name sounds "fantasy-ish". It is also cheesy, though it has a cult-series status due to being local and teaching kids that killing all gods is a good thing for the world.
@@James_Wisniewski It also refers to the idea that Eragon brings the new age so it's and *era gone* by. Both of these things were said by Paolini himself.
Relevant to 12:30 ish Did you konw taht if you sraclmbe the ltetres in eevry wrod of a snectnee epcext the frsit and lsat lrttees, it's slitl rdaelabe?
I've always wondered if this is a product of how English people learn to read the language or if this is the same with most languages, for example ones which have 1 symbol per sound.
Oh nvm what I said on another comment--whatever recording you used here is great! Also thank you for the in-depth information of this somewhat obscure to research topic.
![[TH] 2024 PMGC League | Survival Stage วันที่ 1 | PUBG MOBILE Global Championship](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FVFT-PFwU80/mqdefault.jpg)
First rule of naming is to create a whole new language with a history associated with it
I'm actually gonna make a video on how to bullshit a language well enough
@@Stoneworks You missed that Tolkien joke right there
apo'olaseitoa'au'aonasituinaaxaiseika is home to the speakers of taisei'omoari in my conworld
@@Stoneworks Please do because now I want to drive spikes into my eyes with all the work involved with doing it legit.
Yes.
Mt Doom sounds like an Australian place name. We tend to have a lot of mountains with names reflecting how terrible the land was for the first white explorers. "Mount Disappointment" "Mount Despair," "Never Never," "Mount Buggery" "Nullabor"
Most of these names are basically named by explorers being all "Damnit! More of this blasted country"
"Mount Buggery" could be used as an alternative title for Brokeback Mountain...now I wonder how that name came about? We have some funny place names in Canada too...my favorite is Dildo, Newfoundland and Come By Chance is a very close second.
+Sarah Gray Mount Buggery was named that by a mountain climbers society. It is a long ridge of sharp virtual rocks. Too difficult to climb and is long so you have to take days out of your way to go around it.
@@stikibunn so nothing at all to do with forcible anal penetration? Well bugger me with a budgerigar!
Nullabor is just fancy Latin for No -Trees ...
David Hedges - That's interesting, I'd've thought it was Aboriginal, but maybe whoever came up with that knew a bit about Aboriginal language style and picked Latin that followed a similar style.
Or you can be portuguese and spanish and just name everything based on saints, there's more saints out there than natural features :D
Same with French
That's too true
If you catch the Iberian Peninsula tradition of naming things you can actually make a pretty large picture of naming cities, countries, etc, since you could name your places whatever the people who live there believe in.
Vide São Arnaldo, dos livro do A Lenda De Ruff Ghanor jwhsehwh
You are totally right!
You wanna talk about dumb placenames, my state of Washington is often confused with the city of Washington D.C. This name was chosen over Columbia because they didn't want people to confuse it with... the District of Columbia.
I just always say washington state now.
My town's county is named Columbia, so while it's happened a few times, we at least don't have it as bad as a town named Washington
Same with New York. New York State, and New York City.
@comet :0 Interesting.
I live in Washington state and I just learned that. WHAT THE HELL.
Fun Fact: Even today, "England" still literally means "narrow land" in German.
thinland
@@Envy_May Not quite. "Eng" means "not much room to move in-between", as with a corridor, or the room between two coasts if you only consider the land to be something you can build and live on. "Hier ist es sehr eng" means you don't have much room.
@@Milkymalk creative liberties for snappy localisation
Tightland! :D
Bin Österreicher und hab mir das auch noch nie gedacht.
Ah yes, ЛучшийканалField, my favorite Celtic city.
Famous for its Irish vodka and guillotines.
@@Uroboro_Djinn Hohoho! I didn't know I needed such a beverage until now.
But... I think I will be extremely disappointed if I find it.
@That sorta irish guy Nope.
Lj-u-ć-š-i-j-k-a-n-a-lj =
Ly-u-ch-sh-i-y ka-na-ly =
Lyuch-shiy ka-naly =
Lyuch'shiy kanaly ~=
ljudski(?) kanal =
Human/people's(?) channel/canal
People's Canal Field?
Who can forget about ЛучшийканалField
@@majacovic5141 it means best channel
I'm an American living in Finland.
Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä is a place name I drove past.
Why yes, I do drink heavily.
Hopefully not while you're driving past place names.
Although it's scandinavia so i'm guessing there's no legal reason not to.
M productions
Up in Lapland. Wife and I took a roadtrip through the north recently. I almost shat myself when I saw the name. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä
My current fluency is between 'house plant' and 'particularly verbose dog,' so don't ask for pronunciation!
Oh, and there's also a city called Ii. Yep, just 'ee.' Because fuck you, that's why.
HASEnoncorperated SUMOI NOT SCANDI!
this is why I love FInland.
whats thats place called?
"pillukukkula."
ok.
"PLZ NO MT DOOM"
In my country, we have Death Valley.
Switzerland has the "Murder Wall" to describe a part of Mt Eiger.
Israel has the Dead Sea.
I dunno about the others but the dead sea is called that cause it's too salty for things to live in it. Its not alive, so it's dead. And a sea. Boom Dead Sea
Australia has Mount Disappointment
@@brigid1161 It's lake, not sea.
@@janpiorko3809 I learned it as the Dead Sea so I guess it can be both. I always thought it was weird that it got to be a sea but the great lakes r just lakes and they're way bigger. But yeah I learned it was a sea, not a lake
SoccerLlama it isn’t connected the ocean, so it is lake, but it is also very salty, so people mistook it for a sea
More subtle than Mt. Doom? Okay.. Uh.. DEATH MOUNTAIN (Legend of Zelda)
*Killgore Peak*
*Murder* *Cliffs*
Rampage Valley
@@thecursedcow8109 Disappointment Island
@@leelambert1559 New land
"Disappointment Island"
Oh, look! That's where I was born!
Mood
Wow, my parents actually flew in their private jet all the way from Poschmoest City to abandon me at the orphanage there...
that's Reddit Island
I have an island named after me?
Me too, the locals call it Great Britain
You know whats funny? The name Australia comes from the Latin term "Terra Australis" does mean "Earth southern", while the name Austria comes from the old-german word austar, which means eastern. I just love how the names are similar and different at once.
We were so close to having an "Austaria" on europe smh
@@perpetualsystems Austria is Österreich in german. Eastern+Reich can be country, empire...
except Austria is Osterreich which literally means the "Eastern reich" or "Eastern Land/kingdom" due to it being the easternmost land on the old Holy Roman Empire
Earth southern? lol what? You mean southern land, right? Latin "terra" not only means Earth, but also country, region, surface or soil.
And Austria doesn't come from austar, Austria is a phonetic (and a little bit latinized) transcription of old German "Ostarrichi", which is suspiciously similar to modern-day term "Österreich". I do like this random similarity as well, though.
Whats Australia fo you mean the land down under
9:18 Fun fact, the Greeks coined the term Barbarians when speaking of people outside of Greece, after the Thracian people in the north because when the Thracians spoke their language, all the Greeks could hear was "Bar-Bar-Bar".
See, I knew my political philosophy class in college would come in handy. Take that, dad.
I'd say that wasn't a useful degree if you mentioned a fact that almost everybody else knows.
Thats crazy cool
Yeah man I read that in Horrible Histories when I was 6. Saved a lot of money on a political philosophy degree.
Possibly true but related terms in Sanskrit suggest that the Greeks didn't coin the word and it has older origin
It was similar when the Slavs encountered the Germans. They could not understand a single word they said so they called them 'Niemcy', The mute people.
I like it how The Elder Scroll's Elsweyr just means "somewhere else" :D
They are good at it.
Hammer-fell, Dagger-fall, Sky-rim, Morro-wind, Wallen-wood, Summer-set, Solst-heim...
@@MiksusCraft Hammerfell, previously Volenfell. The same applies to many other places throughout Elder Scrolls lore. But Hammerfell and Volenfell are essentially the exact same thing, which is interesting I think.
I just hate the fucking spelling because it BEGS you to NOT pronounce it EXACTLY like "elsewhere", but there's no possible alternative pronunciation with that spelling
Or "elsewhere."
the khajiit named it that because a popular saying was "the sands are always warmer elsewhere." so they named it elseweyr. lol
Expert: end with -ia, -is -os
Me: *-LAND*
Stan
@@brigadier3596 heim
@@Win090949 -burg
@@brigadier3596 - City
@@Win090949 -dorf
I always assumed "Mount Doom" was like a colloquial name given to it due to the negative associations surrounding it
It is. Mt Doom's real name (and the name we first see it referred to as in the book) is Orodruin
:) Bingo
@@kneecapdestroyer1933 Wow, I missed this comment; thanks! Do you happen to know what "Orodruin" means?
@@3nertiaOrodruin means Burning Mountain or Mountain of The Red Flame.
"Mount Doom" comes from the Gondorian name for it, "Amon Amarth".
@@CoolKidMethew Lovely; thank you!
I accidentally followed this in one of my early worldbuilding attempts. A random name generator had given me an alien species name "Klaxillon." So I figured I'd run with that and lean on the X an double L as being common to their language. This lead to the name of their capitol city "Xhinrell," and I decided that this city was built on a giant city-sized tree said to be their goddess Rell. From here, it made sense that Xhinrell would mean "Upon Rell." So suddenly I had a word, "xhin," which meant "Upon" or "On top of," and a religious background and history behind the city. Eventually I ended up coming up with a bustling spaceport city as well, I can't recall the name but it essentially translated to a somewhat rude way of saying "City of Others," reflecting the highly xenophobic nature of this race.
Klaxillon kinda sounds like "klakson" which means "horn" (as in "car horn") in my language. :v
Fey Indonesia? Malaysia? Or i am just gonna leave :)
+Fey - "Klakson" in English still refers to that stereotypical "our base is being invaded!" alarm you hear in movies fairly often.
But if it's Greek, it's pronounced "Zin rell". If there are no Greeks in your world, it can be called "Ex in rell".
My god of death is Xox, but not Zoz, or Zox, but "Ex Ox", two hard syllables, like Red Sox. I wonder if that's why his realm is called Bahstin ?
fuck this is cool! that was well done :D
I would argue that Mt. Doom is not a bad name... even if "no evil was present" it's a volcanic land filled with `dread and desolation` ... the name doom fits very well as in `if you go there it will be your doom` or something absolutely terrible and devastating happened here: doom... .... pretty much like the real world example: The Dead Sea... if it was a D&D world you would think: "oh.. necromancers or zombies and/or very evil things" .... but it reality it just means: It's a sea and nothing lives in it.
Gabriel Matusevich It's also a translation of 'Amon Amarth'.
Seeing how the hottest, dryest, most lifethreatening place in North America is named "Death Valley", Mt. Doom passes the reality check.
blablubb and Gabriel are 1000% right. The dead sea where no animals live and the life-endangering, harsh and likely-to-kill Death Valley would absolutely pass for something extremely ominous and dark in a world where evil supernatural entities exist, but in the real world, nobody bats an eye, which leads me to think Mt. Doom is no more of a cliche or stupid name than either of those: if there were a Mt Doom irl, for whatever reason, people would likely just roll with it.
I swear, in the book the word "doom" was used to mean certainty. That may have been what he was going for.
totally not jeff I never thought about it that way. You're probably right: "doom" has connotations of fate, and the fact that it was frodo's fate to bring the ring to the mountain (and fate in general) is a huge theme in the story.
Isn't Mt. Doom an exonym? I always figured that's what the people outside of Mordor called that giant evil fiery volcano, while its real lore name was Orodruin. I mean yeah it sounds dumb but so does "the Land of People" when you think about it.
Yeah, you're right. It's also called Amon Amarth in Sindarin. The whole thing with Mount Doom is more a less a joke (I still don't care for the name but it's not bad in sense of realism), and I don't think it came off that way in the video. That's my bad in presentation.
I think the joke was a great way to start a discussion about it! Sorry for spamming your comments in theories, though.
Better than, using an old Latin word, they invented, because they fucked up across the Rhein. And needed reason so they can conquer the Celts in France, but excuse because they couldn't conquer over the Rhein. So they just said, that are completely other people and they are completely barbaric and not worth conquering.
And it's not land of the people it's more like: the Land of the People who speak German.
Our moon's name is Luna, though, and our sun's name is Sol.
(Coincidentally, "Luna" also means "Moon" in russian and, probably, several other languages, and something similar probably goes with "Sol" and "sun")
But yeah, dumb names are everywhere, we just usually can't really understand the connotation due to multiple languages we speak.
Luna and Sol mean Moon and Sun in Latin ;)
"Names should be pronouncable" - Dwemer ruins from elder scrolls lmao.
That's why they're extinct the gods got real tired of their bad names and killed em, saying it was because they were using god magic, that one Snow Elf propaganda
Mzahnch.
That's horribly Anglocentric. You can't pronounce Xhosa names doesn't mean a made up language based on that is bad.
@@Undivided-X that’s true but if you’re writing a book or planning on sharing this world then it’s generally best to cater it to the limitations of your audience. If your world is apart of an English franchise then keeping it pronounceable to English speakers is a given. Same goes if it were to be a Xhosa franchise, it should be tailored to Xhosa speakers.
@@Undivided-X i can pronounce Xhosa words after looking up the pronunciations and just learning,even after nearly ten years i cannot pronounce fucking Mzinchaleft or Irkngthand.
"Names change over time" Alexandria is still called Alexandria
Duke does it mean anything if the people who live there right now call it Eskendereyya
@@Stoneworks depends, is that name a derivative of the original title?
Also, I have kind of a nitpick about your point with Winterfell that you could clarify for me, if you feel like it: why's it so impossible that Winterfell is the Common Tongue derivative of the name in an ancient northern language? The books never specify whether it is or not, so it seems like you're making an assumption.
I can see Winterfell being a translation, simply because canonically, the rulers of the land were once referred to as Kings of Winter in that old tongue, and in later years the title has become Kings of the North with the slow introduction of the Common Tongue; so clearly there's a precedence of evolving language in that specific region.
I could have completely missed the mark on what you're trying to say though, so take it easy on me if I have please c:
@@Stoneworks I guess what I'm ultimately asking, from where are you getting the idea that Winterfell's name has never changed? Sure you never hear of it mentioned by any other name, but people alive today don't refer to Boston as its original title.
@@Stoneworks that's the Arabic version of Alexandria, so, yes, it counts. Btw, Kandahar, Afghanistan was also named Alexandria after Alexander the great.
Al - ikshandryyia?
I need to make notecards of the points or something for DND, this is good information for world building.
In the mean time, since I need to find the timestamps anyways, here is that info for everyone else.
1:52 Names Start as Descriptions of the Area
2:57 Place Names Start As
5:54 Name Evolution
13:08 Things you can do to a word
16:20 Natural Toponymy
16:46 Making Up Place Names
I sure hope I got them all, I just skimmed through instead of re-watching entirely
dc2008242 Thank you. 🙏
Nice video! I do custom worlds for all the rpgs I run. My dwarven City's typically all start with Dahn, which translates roughly to "palace of" or "house of" and end with the ruler of that area, like Dahn Sthern for the city of king Sthern. The name changes on coronation days, and while sometimes the old name still gets thrown around by other races, dwarven cultures in my worlds see it as incredibly rude to refer to someone's rightful home as anothers. It's actually been used twice in my games, this bit of trivia. Once my players insulted a baron accidentally, and the second time they heard a traveling dwarf refer to the city of Dahn Talad, and realized that the old king had apparently been usurped which was a major change in their quest.
Zachary Rucker cool idea dude
Syntax AI neat
Did you just make reversed genitive?!
very cool but possibly one of the most nerdiest thing i've ever seen
Pretty awesome
Long Island
Dead Sea
Red Sea
Cape of Good Hope
Black Sea
Death Valley
False Bay
North Sea
Governor's Island
The Rockies
Great Plains
Ivory Coast
Gold Coast
Easter Island
Christmas Island
Spices Island
McDonald's Island
Isle of Man
The Outback
North Island
South Island
Great Bear Lake
Great Slave Lake
Newfoundland
Rocky Mountains
Great Salt Lake
Kingston
Port Royal
Cape Horn
Georgetown
Hammerfest
Lake Van
Freetown
Porto Novo (New Port)
Great Rift Valley
Libreville
Brazzavile
Queensland
Christchurch
Northern Territory
Isn't it good to hear these place name that really are so realistic with no or less etymology and topoynmy?
Half of these are the product of colonization and therefore don't have the time nor exposure to other languages to change. I agree, realistic and good, however if you name every place in your world like this, you're gonna get a lot of shit. (Also Isle of Man is actually Mann and comes from the Manx word for Island, Vannin)
@@Stoneworks, so... naming half of the places like that, while giving more exotic names to the rest, would indicate that half of the world was (rather) recently colonized, wouldn't it?
The names "Great Bear Lake" and "Great Slave Lake" may sound on the surface like they have no etymology or toponymy, but both actually do have a history.
Great Bear Lake was originally named "Sahtu" by the people who lived on its shores, which means "Grizzly Bear Waters", or something to that effect. Thus, the name isn't really a coloniser's name, it's actually a translation of the original. I believe the video mentioned something about how newly-arriving people sometimes translate and keep using pre-existing place names...
Great Slave Lake was named for the people who lived on its shores, the Dene. The Dene were derogatorily referred to as "slaves" by their traditional enemies, the Cree. Since French (Quebecois) fur traders mainly hired Cree guides, they started calling the Dene esclaves, and the British followed suit, calling them the Slavey. I'm sure the Dene used to have (and maybe still have) a name for it in their own language, but no matter how hard I try I literally cannot find out what it is/was.
I can add a bit about Newfoundland too. Although you can clearly see it's spelled "New Found Land" NOBODY pronounces it that way. It's "Newfnland", or even "Newfnlund" (which is the wrong way of pronouncing it, as any Newfie will tell you). Once again, it DOES have a history, it's just not all that long.
My town is Deer River, it has a river, idk about the deer part tho
Long Island is a pathetic name.. it is just a long Island
12:08
Me, full of smart juices: "oh Arachnia!"
Me, 10 seconds later full of sweat juices: "...woooould be a bad name, ye ahah, who would use that?"
Mt arachnid
first name I thought of was "Raknos" until I realised that's literally the spider alien breed from doctor who whoops
@@fhpurcell7713 I got Arianyana
@@DTux5249 grande
*Spideria?* Spiders or Insects are Arachnids lol.
"Evil place" --> New Jersey
Fair enough :y
"Words should be pronounceable" *shows picture of Polish sign*
Me: It's not our fault you guys pronounce W's wrong.
W like woo(hoo)
@Salivar Ravilas In polish w is pronounced /v/ as in Van
Polish is the mightiest of languages !
If you can't pronounce it that is your fault.
Scrap Lord eh Finish is mightier.
Wait people actually have problems with that? I mean i am not polish but w is v and ł is w, that's all
My sister literaly lives on a street called warriors path where gangs live. Mt doom is not too direct.
@Valami Izé Crime Alley is part of the neighborhood called Park Row. 'Crime Alley' is a name given to the long alleyway running the area after the relatively wealthy Park Row fell into poverty and urban decay. Some stories imply or state this only began happening around the murder of the Wayne's but quickly escalated after that along with the growing corruption and suffering in the rest of the city. Which plays rather well into the psychology of a young Bruce Wayne to see his world literally become a darker place after his parents deaths; even though as an adult he knows intellectually it wasn't perhaps all that connected.
How's Gangs doin?
Theres a path/road near where i live called Dark Road because its pitch black at night.
2:43 "Spotted an enemy - Field" sounds legit
But would a Celtic Briton name their town that?
I would
:3
Spotsfield
Spotenfield
Enfield???77?
What is the sound from?
Ha! Joke’s on you, I’m Icelandic and York is still called Jórvík in my language.
Booyah!
What's Dublin called?
@@justbeyondthecornerproduct3540 Dyflin
1:47 Name Start As Descriptions of the Area
2:47 Place Name start as
5:00 Name Evolution
12:31 Things you can do to a word
15:54 Natural Toponymy
16:25 Making Up Place Names
Isn't there a mountain on earth called "Devil's Mountain"? Not to mention "Death Valley" ? I think as long as the location itself is foreboding, it fits!
There is also one called "Devil's Peak", that one comes with a story. It's a neighbour of Table Mountain btw.
Yeah, but if you place it in "obvious bad guy lands", it just feels cheap. Instead, imagine what it would mean if mount Doom was placed in the Shire. The contrast between the two would signify that the foot of the volcano is safe and a perfect place for living, but the peak is dangerous and you beter stay away. Or the naming could be the result of local folklore.
Death Valley got its English name (it was called Maahunu by the natives there) because a group of prospectors died while traveling through it, so it's very much an example of "giving a perceived bad place a bad name."
Welp. The great canyon is a canyon that’s really big.
There's Mt. Diablo here in California, the very same state with Death Valley in it. Not sure if that's what you were referring to
Regarding Winterfell, and really, basically every other place in Westeros, There's only been a single language change since Any real settlement of man was founded in Westeros, and that's when the Andals came and brought their language. Winterfell was named that for a reason (Supposedly built on the location of the final battle of the War for the Dawn, so 'Winter' (The Others) 'fell' (died) there. Westerosi are shown the be extremely prideful and attached to their great castles and such, so there's never been any onus for the name to change.
Besides that, the world of ice and fire has essentially stagnated in every way for hundreds of year, shown primarily by the fact they've been in the medieval ages for thousands of years on end with no signs of a pseudo renaissance to jumpstart technology again. Places changing names would go against that.
Also all this is the mythical history of the place not the real history. The name could have changed. GRRM was clear that the World of ice and fire is not the History but history written by people of Westeros as they know it. How Winterfell came to be or if the Long Night happened at all is not that certain. He said that we will have to wait for the Grimarilion for the true history that one will be written by Maester Martin not Maester Yandel.
I don't think you grasp the world of a song of ice and fire well enough to have complaints about the name especially of Winterfell... it's like you know nothing of real world contexts and history GRRM painstakingly researched the original names of British and overall European forts, castles, landmarks and such to serve as a base for his world, you criticism is quite childish and screams "I've never read the book nor have I thought deeply into this but allow me to whine about things i've barely thought about"
Debo Datta who are you addressing?
"you're going the wrong way...westeros...is...west"
It is true that the names dont change, but technology obviously dies in great ways, in the dawn age the people lived in the stone age, later came the age of heroes in wich bronze was develop and the first ment invaded westeros, at the end of this period the rise and fall of Ghil happened, the Andal culture was created in northern essos and Valyria started to rise. The age of heroes ended after the Andal invasion wich brough iron to westeros, there has also been recent changes like Braavos creating the arsenal, a giant favtory in wich a ship can be created every day and tyrosh discivering how to make advanced dyes, in fact, all of western essos is in reinasance levels of technology.
I always start with some form of ‘-place,’ loose syllables, then corrupt it for a minute, then pick my favorite step of the corruption, repeat until I get one I really like.
Arachnia -> Aracha -> Aeracha -> Aeraka -> Aerak -> Erak -> Erakia
Aeraka -> Eraka -> Teraka -> Terak -> Tezak -> Tezark
Tezak & Eraka, a fishing hamlet with spider people.
In the Netherlands there is a town called zevenhuizen
it means "seven houses"
.... it's a lot bigger now.
there is another town called doodstil, most people think its dood(dead) stil ( quiet) but actually it's dood's (Death's) til ( old word for bridge)
I always thought that all the ones ending in "dam" are a reference to actual dams that were built there, is this wrong? There are also many ending in "recht" but I can't find any dutch root that is directly using that.
@@admontblanc correct damming in a river is a great way to get an area to keep fish stock and water powered mills and other benefits to humans ( not so much to the enviroment). so for example the river Amstel -> amstelveen ( Amstel-fenn) and Amsterdam ( should be Amstelerdam but lazy people = name shortening) and the river Rotte and Rotterdam
about recht I have no clue but dutch wikipedia page on Utrecht has this ( translated) :
trecht is based on the latin trajectum which meant a place where the river rhine was able to be waded through and crossed, the U in Utrecht stands for uut which in old dutch for downstream. the name Utrecht should therefore be interprented as Downstream from the crossing
that would make other -trecht cities referring to places along the Rhine or perhaps other rivers where in pre-modern times there was a natural crossing.
other common endings are veld ( field) meer ( lake) beek (brook/stream) veer ( ferry) bosch/bos ( old dutch and dutch for forrest) dorp ( village/town) donk ( raised ground to keep things built on it safe from floods)
@@gerbenvanessen I knew there had to be a sense for the "trecht"/"recht" thing, the "dam" ones were easy to figure since you have a lot of cities that literally needed to be dammed around before much could be built, and from what I have read before the damming projects were started most coastal Netherlands was swampy deltas. Utrecht, but I also been near Zwindrecht, and there are at least a couple others like that I don't rememebr at the moment, that's why I asked.
@@admontblanc I just looked up dutch wikipedia for zwijndrecht and aparently its old frankish and old dutch not trecht but similar. Zwijn in modern dutch means boar but in zwijndrecht Swinen in old frankish means water flowing away during low tide while Drecht is still a bit related to trecht but in old west dutch it came to mean drift. of the river so zwijndrecht means somehing along the lines of "bend in the river that can be crossed at low tide" ( according to dutch wikipedia page on zwijndrecht)
@@gerbenvanessen lol, that's such a great way to name places, not only they described a land feature, they made sure it had useful information about it encoded. Anyway, thanks for this.
My favorite name origin is why my state is called "Yucatán" Turns out when the spanish colonizers reached what is now called the Yucatán Peninsula they had the decency of asking the native mayans how the land was called, the natives answered "Yuuk ak katan" which roughly translates to "I can´t understand you..." or "I don´t speak your language"
Well, in Tolkien’s work he used Doom to mean fate, more or less. Such as the Valar’s council the Ring of Doom. And Elrond says in Fellowship, ‘We are all bound by this one fate; this one doom’ He invokes any more ancient form of the word fate, and we can know he does since his native tongue is Quenya.
This is something that happens when you are knowledgeable in several languages (as Tolkien was) and the language you're speaking most of the time lacks a specific word found in others. For instance, the word "Doom" does not exist in Spanish; destiny or fate are similar enough. Der, die, and das do not exist in English, because German is gendered and English isn't.
That's why in the German version it's translated into Schicksalsberg instead of Berg der Verdammniss
Criminally underwatched. Very clear explanations, incredibly useful for my worldbuilding, tight editing. Subscribed!
'when your a fan of the irl Medieval Kingdom of Aragon in the 15th century Ad, but when ever you start to talk about their naval Mediterranean empire people think your talking about 'King Aragon'
I feel that...
Dude, that was ossome on so many levels
Oh, so _that's_ why everyone in French thought that naming "Eragon" a fantasy book series about dragons, with an ostentatious dragon on the cover, was an *extremely lazy, obvious and cheesy move* and _not_ subtle at all.
_Because we don't stress the same syllables!_
We also have a book series from a local author that launched a couple years before Eragon, called "Amos Daragon: the mask-wearer", literally because "D'Aragon" sounds ostensibly "fantasy-ish" in French. It sounds explicitly like "dragon".
That series is also a bit cheesy, though it has a cult-series status due to being local and teaching kids that killing all gods is a good thing for the world.
"... it fits right into the image of an evil place."
*Shows New Jersey* 15:49
Lol I was scrolling through the comments and he actually said that when I read yours
That place is the heart of Evil
One does not simply walk there
Thank you for this video! Toponymy and etymology is something that on the surface seems rather unimportant, but actually is one of the major cornerstones of world-building. I, for example, don't like the classic fantasy mish-mash, when in some games or books you have Vladimir, Jean, George, Carlos and Siegfried all living in one village, or when writers use in their made-up worlds "Earth-Bound" names like Christian, Brittany etc. It also can be the opposite with ridiculous names like Aeneryona Tzalanthyous of Ceald Fiolosri.
I can literally spend hours thinking of a name even when it's only some minor town or character. It's actually the thing that I enjoy the most out of worldbuilding because really good names can tell entire stories on their own. Personally, I find the names of kingdoms and nations the hardest.
Some naming advice: Sometimes it's good (especially in case of minor villages and towns) to not be afraid and just take the name of an already existing place and perhaps slightly twist it. You don't need to be 100% original. Same goes for noble houses, George Martin has his Targaryens and Baratheons but also Starks, Blackwoods, Gardeners and Tyrells.
Yes! I completely agree on how important it is. One thing I find especially interesting, and unfortunately rare, is how authors and world builders can use names to subvert audience expectations. I was playing D&D with my lowish level group and they came across a high Elven society, which I (shamefully) haven't put enough thought into to make it different enough from the Tolkien cliché, but I have worked on its langauge. I had one character tell them the name of the first elven town they were about to see, and he said it was "Tsücheqdeo", and let them see how it was written (૬દ્દ'૭દ્દ'ઠ, in Gujarati script, if you're interested). They, being a chaotic group that is fond of raiding, decided that they would ransack the town. But upon seeing the town and how it was a well defended and well built, they decided not to. As it turns out, they thought it would be a poor (and I hate to say) rural-African-style village based on the name itself. They said that if I named it like "Valyria or something", they wouldn't have even thought about it. But because they, being white Americans, were used to Greco-Roman toponymy being "high and elegant" and anything resembling African languages (which my Elven one is based on) being lowly and poor, they found themselves in a sort of... culture shock I guess. I loved this, and I think it positively challenged their way of thinking. It was reinforced when they did a quest about a commoner trying to become a noble, and the commoner was actively practicing this high Elven, african-inspired language. Sorry for the long paragraph, but I feel very passionate about this, but I 100% agree that language is an effective and powerful tool that can sometimes make or break the world building.
That's very interesting. It also tackles one thing that can enormously help world-building and that's the knowledge of other languages. If for example, an American who only speaks English decides to make a Germany-inspired kingdom it will most likely look far worse than if someone who actually can speak German did it. That's generalization, of course, if that hypothetical American puts enough effort into his creation, it can turn out amazing.
ShtyepaanCZ something I've learned when making languages, Go by the Script first, it's counterintuitive I know but, Visuals are key to some languages, imagine it's primitiveness by the complexity of it's designs, Late Egyptian vs Early Sumerian is a great example. A language with fewer primitive like symbols will likely have a well structured Lingual side to it. Same goes with having more primitive looking symbols.
But in the real world you could easily end up having Ioannis, Thorsten, Katinka, and Moses living together in a village. Many names cross borders, due to cultural exchange, trade, religion and so forth. It's not necessarily unrealistic.
Something you probably shouldn't do is to have Carlos living with Charles and Karl, as they are three versions of the same name. Each culture has their own version of the name, and as such there is no reason to use the other versions.
But even this is sometimes subverted. It's for example not to uncommon here in Denmark to have both Johannes, Hans, Jon, Jens, and John which are all different language's versions of the same name, but which have all gained popularity.
@@Thetarget1 In a port city, sure, but not in a village in the heartland of some kingdom ...maybe in a border village or a big Market Town.
This was incredibly informative and well done. I was already doing a lot of the things you recommended intuitively, but descriptive place names often felt lazy to me. Yet, they're very realistic. Makes me feel a lot better about using them.
Ossoume video!
Randomly browsing and came across this after looking up some novel making guides and tips. After seeing how you worked with arachnid to make a location/places name, I was like "...Yes, all those years of bad spelling, and failed english classes.. I can use it here."
But seriously your humor made me a fan, great editing also.
Very interesting.
Funnily enough, I remember coming across Eragon in my school library as a child. I instantly noticed the Dragon/Eragon connection to the point that I misread it as Dragon.
I was 9 at the time.
Aragon was a real country. It was in what is now northeastern Spain.
Yeah, but I'm talking about the dragon-riding dude named Eragon. I think Christopher Paolini named him this because it sounds High European, like Aragon, and because it's close to the word dragon.
Aragon still exists, it only names its core territory though. It's an autonomous community inside of Spain (fun fact: one of the many titles of the King, and his second one in terms of importance, is "King of Aragon"
0:48
"...and names should be pronouncable..."
That's a completely pronouncable name...
...aaaaas long as you are Polish.
Same Řepice or Říčany for Czechs.
you remember what it was? got censored now
grzegorz brzęczyszczykiewicz
@@pupinator98 yup now its all comeing togheter.
I was curious about that, why everyone jokeing about it in comments and I don't know what is this.
I don't know this could be everythig but I think english people would have problem with for example "Nowa Wieś Wielka" or somethig like "Pszczyna"
For a frame I could see an “e”
Hahahaha the picture of the state of New Jersey entering in at the corresponding time “..of an evil place.” Was absolute internet gold.
Thanks - I enjoyed this! I’ve never had a problem with “Mount Doom” myself, but I always think Hobbiton is a bit of a cop out. It would make sense for other races to refer to “Hobbit Town” but not the hobbits.
Iain Jones yo same Hobbiton is lame
@@Stoneworks To me, JRR the Tol-father gets a pass. Names that would send me into epileptic cringe-fits for *anybody* else, *anybody*, skate right by because JRRT was first.
Whereas GRRM's arbyrtray Y's stuck yn just about everi name ys a byt wyerd to myeiey.
But hey, it's all good. I have an almost fetishistic refusal to use the letters Z, Q, and even A (unless I have to, and then 1 A per name...) and NO GODDAMN RANDOM APO'STROP'HE'S! That's what really does my head in, and I love that Neal Stephenson lampshades this crap in _Reamde._ An amazing author, one of my very favorites, and an excellent, interesting book.
Anyway, I can't abide that standard tendency to name people and places with only A's and some Z's for company...maybe a Q in there, next to a hellspawned random apostrophe; I don't know how so many other just glide by a name like Abshazzacaazzanzanar and think it works; looks like a man accidentally sneezed an onomatopoeia on his keyboard.
So yes, the R'aqndamar N'amezz of Ba'ad Fa'nn'tass'eee Nyuovel'zz' infuriates me so much I can feel the good-taste-center of my soul bleed.
Just leave Hobbiton, the Shire, Mount Doom, et al alone, okay? Aliorum iudicio permulta nobis et facienda et non facienda et mutanda et corrigenda sunt, Mr. Language Guy. Yeah.
I shall be content spackling my worlds with Latinoid names, whether you judge me pretentio maximus or not. After all, de gustibus non est disputandum.
In utterly sane seriousness, thanks for a very interesting video. You helped fill in a number of holes for me about good place-names, so cheers.
Actually, Stephen Brust in his Dumas-inspired prequels to the Jhereg series has an excellent scene about how placenames, detailing how over the centuries, a bridge called called "The Old Bridge" ends up, roughly, Altebrueckenpontyfordabrygganwyk Bridge; that one passage taught me a lot about how placenames work.
I agree. About “Hobbiton”.
But we also should remember that Tolkien invented that name when his story was meant as an oral story.
It’s homely and easy to remember for children.
And I guess the name just stuck!
Well the Hobbits call it Bywater.
Something that happened in my area. In two cases three settlements had the same name. I'm assuming that only became a problem when the common traveler was able to travel further than before.
In one case all three settlements were on different rivers, so an at the
I have to disagree with you point about Mt. Doom. Tolkien used the traditional Anglo-Saxon meaning of the word Doom, meaning Judgement or decision. Excellent video however.
I knew it was York when you said "Eoforwich" thanks to The Last Kingdom lmao
Goated show
Put this video on to listen to in the background while I made a sandwich, and I'm still sitting here with an empty plate. Video completely captivated my attention, good job.
Just so u know. U got a thimbs up before you even started just by saying you were worried about messing up. The humility was adorable
*mind blown* Dragon = Eragon..
Damn... that makes the name just much less impactfull..
lol
Eragon's Lair
Still sounds neat
I actually like knowing the similarity. It doesn't lessen the name for me and I think knowing it's origin makes it more interesting.
Thank you so much for all the information and advice, it is very helpful and I intend to put it to effect immediately. I appreciate all the advice and hope to see more from you in the future!
3:47
“Harold’s Farm!”
*(Harold proceeds to finally show his pain)*
Just in time for me to start naming places in my world build
The example of your newly renamed hamlet of "Jeff" killed me. bravo good sir.
Putting a picture of New Jersey while saying “an evil place” is wild.
Also great vid
you got the name for rhode island wrong, rhode island is named “rhode island” because when settlers came to one of the islands in Narraganset bay they thought it looked like rhodes in greece, and eventually it spread to the whole state
Concerning Winterfell, it is likely that it was suddenly renamed. Given that the Stark words are “winter is coming”, the home of the Starks is logically the place where winter came (or fell)
How can you consider this a failure? I'm going to be using this over and over. This is good information.
I love that you pronounced Llantysilio pretty well! I also love how you make and present your videos to keep me engaged, and I learn a lot from them. Thank you for your fantastic content!
coming back four years later ready to write that book finally, but forgot how you said to name stuff good
A fell, geographically, is a high barren hill type thing...which is exactly what Winterfell looks to be if you take out all the castley bits. I'm surprised nobody (that I've seen) in the comments has pointed that out yet.
"the places are named on native languages."
Mount Everest?
Colonel Everest's last name I would believe.
@@matthewhemmings2464
Yet not the local language.
The Tibetan and Nepalese have their own names for it. I think ‘Mt Everest’ is a roughly western name
@@edubblesspirit
It is. But even after living in the lower ranges of Himalayas, we call it Mount Everest.
@@edubblesspirit AFAIK cartographers couldn't get the native name for Mt. Everest because Nepal and Tibet didn't allow access to foreigners, so they named it after colonel Everest, who didn't want his name on the mountain but couldn't come up with a better idea, therefore it stayed Mt Everest.
This video was very helpful. I got a lot of crap in one my early D&D campaigns for naming a town Riverun (pronounced river-run) in that it sounded incredibly unoriginal. In my defense the town was built along the banks on the river with a series of bridges connecting sides to one another with a large bridge in the middle that was a commerce hub. The town was also the central hub of trade centered around the major river flowing from northern kingdoms to southern kingdoms. So the structure of the town running along the banks of the river and some time constraints became the town Riverun. This video both solidified my theory on naming as well as gave me some good inspiration. Thanks!
Lol, you got a lot of crap? Riverrun is literally a castle in ASOIAF
@@kenobi6257 I know!!!! In my defense this was before I read ASOIAF. No one said I was copying George RR Martin but they said it was lame and lacked creativity. So I had to explain my theory on how towns and cities were named. The table wasn't satisfied but then again it wasn't their campaign or story. They had to deal with it. People will nitpick anything that they can.
@@SV-og2rq Well, I got my own super cool idea in my head of a land called Elyria... until I noticed that one of the less important Valyrian cities had that name xD so don't feel bad about it. I'd love to do one of those campaigns, but I never had the kind of friends to do it xD
@@kenobi6257 the nice thing about the name elyria is that it's so ambiguous yet distinctly elvish that you could get away with it. Someone might notice that it bears the same name as an area in ASOIAF but one could also notice that theres a game called chronicals of elyria, the name is used in other fantasy worlds and is even a town in Ohio. A good table shouldn't put you down for name choice but instead be invested and captivated in the world that you create. Also I have had issues recently with finding a good table since I've recently relocated but theres a local game shop that helps with connecting players for the purpose of tabletop games.
So you could look into that.
Very helpful! I'm going to think up good names for my world building project now.
I am a linguistics student and during my first semester, our professor walked across the room repeating the sentence "Welsh is NOT english". I live in Southeastern Europe where this isn't exactly common knowledge. Then, she made us try to pronounce that welsh word you showed in order to really make us understand that the Celtic language fakily is unique. Your video gave me flashbacks fo that cursed lecture.
Donjon Fantasy Generators, one of the best!
"I tricked with this Greece shit"
jokes on you, I already knew Eboracum was in england
I know this is old for you but, this reminds me of the name history of the town I live in, it used to be a place where nobels would travel through from scotland to london, it was the easiest, quickest and "safest" route, and bandits knew that, so they began murdering them, so much so that the nobels asked them to stop and said they would pay them to stop murdering them there and to let them pass. So the town was named Murder Path....Now it's changed over the years obviously to Morpeth xD
This is hands-down the best video I've ever watched on naming ...
That was darn good. Makes me think that step one is give everything a name in English (Jeffs Well) , then use the sounds to create a feeling you want (Guiffendal: Guiff is Jeff, en is genative, dal is hole, but dalwas would be well, water hole, but the was gets dropped ). Couple six or 8 place names, and you have your conlang started.
Speaking of names for Germany, when I took Italian lessons in Italy, they taught me to call it Tedesco, instead of Alemania I learned from my Mexican parents, or Germany in school. Weirdly, my cross street growing up was Alemany.
10:04 I actually lived in George, Washington. Home of the world's largest cherry pie. 4th of July was lit!
I really enjoyed this video!
I created a world with names called Shuuana, Stantoos, R'Stralce, Elus, Tradmart, Triest Plains, Sethlands, Luding Mountains. Such memories.... Thank you for the video, I think i will resume working on my world.
I must say as a native german speaker that your pronounciation of german words are top notch in contrast with what i've heard so far from other anglophone content creators :) Very good content, you help me a lot with writer's block!
Something else this video made me think of, particularly with the Suraknit example, is that it is a good idea to think about the race that these words originate from and how they vocalize. The name Suraknit works particularly well, because I would imagine an arachnid race would have a very clicky, hissy sounding language. Think about the creature's actual mouth/tongue/throat and how they would form sounds. Something with no lips can't make an M sound, and something with hard mandibles would click a lot. Maybe the written form of the language in English letters is only an approximation of how their unique letters are pronounced. Maybe the KN in Suraknit is actually a rapid triple throat-click that no human could actually do. Go nuts, after all, not all human languages translate perfectly into the English alphabet, and we all have the same anatomy.
A good example of this is the way Lovecraft described how to pronounce Cthulhu, or rather, how one would approximate pronouncing it, as he said it's not something a human would be able to say properly.
Yes! However, if you do that you need to be able to give human versions of the non human sounds, so that anyone interested could actually speak it.
Stoneworks That could even become part of another layer of lore, as a location can have multiple names depending on language. Like how we have Deutschland/Germany, or Nihon/Japan. Perhaps over the years native traders just get used to using the alternate name with foreigners and it starts to be officially adopted.
I have a question. I am writing a fantasy story in an industrial revolution setting. A lot of the languages people speak are real languages, but with name changes (for example Hindi's name is changed to Suvarnami because that's the name of the place).
A big thing about the population is that the main beliefe of the world is that the continents are the corpses of the gods. So one kingdom's name is Kolani which literally means corpse, because it's founder was extremely cycnical as a person.
Most other names have some basis around that beliefe, would you say that this is too unrealistic if a naming convention?
Nope, that sounds like pretty good world building to me
This reminds me of what I thought when I was writing one of my first complete worlds. The city was literally just a place with large walls that kept the poor from the rich and the rich from the poor. Those walls just so happened to be ring shaped. So it was called "Ring City" in the worlds language. The large area with ruins was called "The Ruins" also in the worlds language. Even the world it self had a simple name (which I'm honestly slightly more proud of) it was a world between life and death so it was called: "the place NEARER to death" originally, was then shortened to Nearer eventually, but because of accents and time it became "Nayar" which sounded the same and Nay just happened to mean dark which the world was always. This also lead to the suffix -ar meaning a place that was being referred to (which is a backwards way for a morphim to come to be but I think it made sense). So the name went from: "the land nearer to death" to be "Nayar: Dark Place"
that first place is just Ba Sing Se
Thanks for this! I found it entirely by accident and was a bit ho-hum as I don't intend to create or name any fantasy place, but you hooked me with "Exeter"; I like how you explained how names change and the [forgot the terms] how people call themselves and what others call them. Given me a few things to look up and explore, so thank you for broadening my horizons!
My great grandfather built a house in a place called Utjeha (in Montenegro). The literal translation for Utjeha would be uh consolation (there's probably a simpler word but I can't think of anything, you get the gist). Now the whole place is pretty much centered around the beach there, most of the buildings there are summer houses or hotels, it's more tourist spot that settlement. The place got it's name basically... from a bar (but like wow, a bar/pub straight up called consolation). Before all of the aforementioned buildings were built, that bar was basically the only thing there, so whenever people went to that beach (which does have an official name but nobody uses it and the fact that I don't even know what it is should say enough) they'd just refer to it by the name of the bar. I don't even think the bar still exists but the place to this day carries it's name, which I find kinda cool
Funny coincidence at 3:47 - I have a borough in my world building named very simple after a guy named Harold, who rebuild it after over a decade of slumification. 😅 The residents called it "Halville" as a thank-you tribute to him. 😊
10:10 One place is straight up called "Intercourse"
I’ve been there. They sold socks at the gift shop there that said “I
In my story, the world got rebuilt, and Florida because Disyold with the capital Walt. Why? _Walt_ _Dis_ ney W _o_ r _ld._
It’s the only one in my book with a good name which is why I’m watching this video.
why did the world get rebuilt
In Iceland, almost every place name is easily understood by the population, Reykjavík-Smokey Cove, Egilsstaðir-the place of Egill.
Just wanted to let you know that I absolutely agree with you.
Even the weird ones: Eyjafjallajökull- Island Mountain Glacier, Trékyllisvík- TreeBoatbottomCove
Hi man, i'm from brazil and thanks to you i'll have to spend at least a month renaming a lot of the magnificent places i created in my RPG.
And don't get it wrong, I'm really thanking you, your video was sensational and inspired me to have this job to improve my world
If only I had seen this video sooner, I might not have named a city something as unpronounceable as Œraþæön...
You could evolve *Œraþæön into 'Erathen' or something. I dunno, up to you.
To rewrite this so it's a bit easier on the eyes ...
Örathäön (using German-style umlauts)
Simplified: Urathaion, Urathaon.
Further simplification: Urathion.
It's not too complicated of a word ... to me, it's just a matter of understanding the sounds and how they can be rewritten without deviating too far from the original. The appearance of the word changes, and of course pronunciation will change at least slightly as well, resulting in something that's easier to pronounce and easier to spell. That's how I tackle the puzzle, anyway. :D
Erapheon would look and sound cool as an evolution tho...
ALISON WE TOLD YOU NO
Urathean?
2:43 if you are interested in what is said here: "The enemy was spotted" or "an enemy is spotted in the rear" in Russian languege or something like that. (I had a huge trouble in the begining and may have mistaken)
lol i always thought eragon came from aragorn... you know because hes supposed to be a kind of aragorn
I found the "Eragon" thingy so on the nose that it became cringeworthy.
The book title literaly screamed "Somebody had no creativity!" to me.
The word "Eragon" is literally just the word "dragon," but the d is replaced with an e.
Aragorn sounds explicitly like "dragon". So does the "Aragon" spanish place and family name. Everyone in French thought that naming "Eragon" a fantasy book series about dragons, with an ostentatious dragon on the cover, was an extremely lazy, obvious and cheesy move and not subtle at all.
The books and the movie apparently had very little success outside of the USA. Nobody here even thought that this thing was ever actually popular. Apparently it's because we don't stress the same syllables when pronouncing "Eragon"? We have a book series from a local author that launched a couple years before Eragon, called "Amos Daragon", literally because that name sounds "fantasy-ish". It is also cheesy, though it has a cult-series status due to being local and teaching kids that killing all gods is a good thing for the world.
@@James_Wisniewski Hey, I watched the video too!
@@James_Wisniewski It also refers to the idea that Eragon brings the new age so it's and *era gone* by. Both of these things were said by Paolini himself.
Sorry, but 10y/o me named my hand-shaped planet that I still use today Handland and I can't think of anything better lol
Great video! Lots of solid information and thought but into it. Would love to see more! :)
Greetings from Switzerland.
Beautiful example, Volgograd
Relevant to 12:30 ish
Did you konw taht if you sraclmbe the ltetres in eevry wrod of a snectnee epcext the frsit and lsat lrttees, it's slitl rdaelabe?
Supersage 171 right! Its so cool
Supersage 171 easy way to create place names
I've always wondered if this is a product of how English people learn to read the language or if this is the same with most languages, for example ones which have 1 symbol per sound.
Ofo
The Keksadler
I am not a English native speaker and I still understood it
Oh nvm what I said on another comment--whatever recording you used here is great! Also thank you for the in-depth information of this somewhat obscure to research topic.
Thank you for this, it was very comedic which kept me entertained, but also extremely informative.