Any tips for coming up with place names?

[AllanR]

A reader pointed out to me I had a Mario, Martin, Marco and a Maria all in the space of a couple paragraphs. Names were changed!

 

[Wayne Mack]

I think so long as you aren't accidentally duplicating a name from something like Star Wars you'll be fine.

In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, he has a country named Andor. It doesn't seem to have been issue.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, he has a country named Andor. It doesn't seem to have been issue.

Yes, but that was probably before Disney bought Star Wars. Who knows what would happen now . Lol, all joking aside though it's probably still not a big issue. Names, to the best of my research, can't be copyrighted though they can be trademarked. Really, the biggest risk is with readers seeing it, thinking it was a deliberate ripoff, and giving a snotty review.

 

[tinkerdan]

A reader pointed out to me I had a Mario, Martin, Marco and a Maria all in the space of a couple paragraphs. Names were changed!

That's nothin'; what's more important is to remember the names you are using.
I had a Todd Summerfield, who somehow, somewhere became Todd Anderson for one scene.
To my knowledge, no one noticed it and it was awhile before I stumble across it and it still needs fixed.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

A few months ago I toyed with the idea of writing a random town name generator
I found this wiki page listing common forms in place names

List of generic forms in place names in the British Isles - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

From that list I came up two lists, one for prefixes and one for suffixes.
The idea is to randomly pick one from each, combine them and hey presto, a new name (Well possibly. Obviously a quick search would be required )

Prefixes	Suffixes
Ack, Ard, Ash, Ast, Axe, Bal, Ban, Bam, Beck, Ben, Brad, Car, Cul, Dal, Din, Dun, Dum, Dol, Don, Est, Exe, Fin, Gar, Hil, Lang, Lin, Ling, Kil, Kin, Kirk, Nan, Nor, Pen, Pit, Pol, Pont, Shep, Ship, Stan, Sud, Sut, Swin, Wes, Win	borough, bourne, brough, burn, bury, by, caster, chester, cester, combe, coombe, cote, cott, dale, dean, den, field, ford, ham, holm, ingham, ington, ley, leigh, mere, minster, mouth, ness, ney, pool, port, shaw, stead, stone, thorpe, thorpe, thwaite, toft, ton, tun, wick, wich, wyke, worth

As to the usefulness of this...

 

[Wayne Mack]

Here is another name generator. One of the options is Places and Locations with a lot of choices of type of location. I've used this tool a couple of time for person name generation when I wanted to reflect a specific nationality. Normally, I just make up a name, sometimes based a characteristic, as needed when writing. Fantasy name generators. Names for all your fantasy characters.

 

[sknox]

A few months ago I toyed with the idea of writing a random town name generator
I found this wiki page listing common forms in place names

List of generic forms in place names in the British Isles - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

From that list I came up two lists, one for prefixes and one for suffixes.
The idea is to randomly pick one from each, combine them and hey presto, a new name (Well possibly. Obviously a quick search would be required )

Prefixes	Suffixes
Ack, Ard, Ash, Ast, Axe, Bal, Ban, Bam, Beck, Ben, Brad, Car, Cul, Dal, Din, Dun, Dum, Dol, Don, Est, Exe, Fin, Gar, Hil, Lang, Lin, Ling, Kil, Kin, Kirk, Nan, Nor, Pen, Pit, Pol, Pont, Shep, Ship, Stan, Sud, Sut, Swin, Wes, Win	borough, bourne, brough, burn, bury, by, caster, chester, cester, combe, coombe, cote, cott, dale, dean, den, field, ford, ham, holm, ingham, ington, ley, leigh, mere, minster, mouth, ness, ney, pool, port, shaw, stead, stone, thorpe, thorpe, thwaite, toft, ton, tun, wick, wich, wyke, worth

As to the usefulness of this...

It's not a bad idea. I can see doing the same for French, German, Spanish, and Italian, at the very least.
[quick search]
Aw well of course others have thought of it first.
[Aside: Advice to Those Obsessing over Being Original: someone else thought of it first, so stop worrying]

German toponymy - Wikipedia

Appendix:French toponyms - Wiktionary

en.wiktionary.org

Norman toponymy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of Latin place names in Italy and Malta - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So, obviously the keywords for search are either place names or toponymy, then plug in your region of choice. And, at least for Europe, choose regions over modern nation-states and you'll find more variety.

And this is just fun. Placeholder names in a multitude of languages

List of placeholder names by language - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Timben]

Swiftwood
Snakeburn
Silvervale
Dirtpost
Wolfspire
Faycairn
Curseacre
Dawnpeak
Dirtcrest
Amberfall

 

[LordOfWizards]

Personally, I would not use a software name generator. There's a little something magic about inventing names for a book. One of my favorite parts of writing I guess.

Two things - 1) Your story has a theme. The name should fit the theme.
2) Keep the characters accurate. If you get the names mixed up, it will confuse you as much as anyone.

 

[Far Stranger]

I do enjoy browsing the random name generators for inspiration, but it’s great fun trying to invent names too. I wanted a jewel name recently and came up with COUMARIN - then saw it this week on my moisturiser’s ingredients list ‍

 

[jd73]

So I'm busy trying to come up with some names for a town in a pseudue medieval fantasy setting, but I'm not having much luck. Either I make up something very generic, or dull, or find there's a real world place with the same, or close enough name. Sometimes even all three or worse yet, after googling my ideas, it's very similar to an existing fictional place I've never heard of, and I do not want to end up accidentally using a name someone else has already created.

So, I want to know, are there any tricks people use to come up with original names for places, or even peoples names?

I chose names from my spam folder, or pick something from the Soybomb nonsense generator, or simply based on whatever gumpf is easier to type, eg Pailsuche

Ah there's probably a place in Austria called that... Pail's Uche then