# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Writing, Stories, Linguistics, Toponymy and other wordy stuff ! >  More naming questions

## Sarithus

Hello Guild. I've got some more specific naming questions. I think the reason I come up with some interesting questions (as a few people have said) is because I over-think and complicate things. Knowing that however, I still can't help but have tons and tons of questions when it comes to labels.

1. Let's say I have a river called 'River Sathir' Where does the Sathir part come from? Is it the area, from a person who found it or is related in some way to it, from something that happened there or all and any of the above?


2. River Sathir flows into a lake. Should the lake be called Lake Sathir? Or, again, named after someone? 

3. The Forest of Thendorome. Does that imply that the forest is named after a person or simply is named after the area in which it is in?

4. Naming hills and valleys etc. Tolkien names hills and other things often in Sindarin. Emyn Muil means The Drear Hills, for example. Should River Sathir mean something like Anduin means 'Great River?'

5. Is it strange to use Anglicized (hope I'm using the right term there, e.g 'The Grove, The Great Chasm') in a map where some names aren't? What could it say about a certain place if one forest is called Thendorome and another is called 'The Grove'

Thanks.

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## J.Edward

There could be many reasons for the name, within the  language it comes from.
Having just gone through a number of rivers in Gondor, a good example would be the river Lefnui. It means fifth, as it was the fifth river in Gondor.
Again, the lake could be named for all sorts of things. Often it seems like it is a region thing, ie named for the region it's in.
Naming conventions can be a complicated thing if you aren't actually basing them on a language. If you are they become simple very quickly.
I wouldn't mix descriptive names unless english names play a large role elsewhere.

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## ChickPea

I'd say that, unless you're developing an entire history and language for your world, you may be over-thinking it.  :Smile: 

Most place names have evolved over hundreds or thousands of years, and they changed as areas were conquered by invaders who spoke a different language. If you look at the history of the UK alone, there have been so many different peoples who've flavoured the names of the landscape (the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, the Romans etc, not to mention the local tribes like the Celts/Picts etc.) Wikipedia has some info ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponym...om_and_Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...om_and_Ireland

To answer your questions specifically, I've given my thoughts below, though I'm no expert on this.

1. Could be either. Some leaders might name areas after themselves, but I think more often a geographical feature of the landscape would be the root of its name.
2. Don't think there's any specific convention to this. A river could pass through more than one lake on its way to the sea, and those would have different names.
3. See no. 1.
4. It would make sense for the biggest river in an area to have a name whose root word means 'Great River' or something like that, but again, it's hardly mandatory. The Thames river (allegedly) means 'dark' or 'cloudy' and takes its name from ancient European languages (depending on who you believe) but it has changed a lot through the years.
5. I think it's perfectly fine to have very different place names because of what I've written above. Names evolve through time, just as language does (compare Old English from a thousand years ago to modern English. They're barely the same language.) Some places will hold on to their original names, relatively unscathed, but others will be modernised, which could lead to big differences in style.

I found this site a while back, and found it really interesting...

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/reso...lacenames.html

It gives meanings for many different root words that crop up in British place names, and might provide some inspiration. 

Tolkien is a bad example to follow for most of us, because the guy was a linguist, and words and their meaning were his joy, and he wanted to develop whole new languages which needed consistent rules and grammar. Most of us aren't doing that. If you decide 'Sathir' means big river, or, instead it's the name of a clan chief from 300 years ago, well, that's what Sathir is going to mean! It would be a nice touch if you could reuse root words in your map (for instance, decide that syllable 'xyz' means 'hill' and use that element as part of the name for a few hills throughout your map. It gives a sense of consistency and creates the idea of a different language used by the natives.

So, in summary, I'm no expert so take these thoughts or leave 'em, but really, you can call your places/landscape features whatever you want, depending on what suits your world-building. If you want to name lots of places after a dominant figure from history, go for it. If you want to draw attention to an ancient battle, name something after it. If these historical elements are important to the story, then work them in through the place names. However, if there aren't any memorable leaders/battles, just make something up. It's entirely up to you.

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## J.Edward

Yep - what ChickPea said.  :Wink:

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## Azélor

I think your over-thinking. Historically, people did not used their imagination much : http://www.kalimedia.com/Atlas_of_True_Names.html

From what I know, it looks good but it's not the exact translation and they tend to add words like ''land of'' everywhere.

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## Pixie

I guess you have a choice between three:

- go Tolkien on the whole thing

- define a little bit of linguistic identity between words that are used by a given culture (like arabian-like words, germanized words, japanese-like words, plain simple english)

- don't really care about it


Since you describe yourself as an "overthinker", looks like option 3 is out of the question... hmmm, will you be the next Tolkien... hmmm...

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## Sarithus

I just find it almost impossible to give something a name without thinking about its origins. Takes a lot of fun out of making maps, if I'm honest. I might try going tolkien mode and naming things after in a language just so I have some structure. It seems to make more sense to me that maps should always be either based on a language or Anglicized completely showing the meaning of those names.

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## Pixie

You need to take into consideration then, that as languages evolve some words "cristallize" and stop being "refurbished for maintenance of meaning". 

Take Lisbon as an example - it started out as a greek expression: Ulissispolis (city of Ulisses), romans turned it into Olisipo and latin speakers could probably recognize the origin of the word for centuries (like you recognize the origin of Amsterdam, but wouldn't translate it to "Dam at the Amstel"). 
The arab world knew the word and used it extensively, for sure, and after the goths were expelled from the iberian peninsula, the word kept its phonetical core, not its semantical value - so it became a close approximation, in arab common sounds ("p" doesn't exist in arabic, to this day): Lishbuna (which I bet doesn't translate to city of Ulisses in any seemingly way in arabic). And from there, to Lisboa (in portuguese) or Lisbon (anglicized). So, even an anglicized map would show the word without its original meaning, which is irrelevant by now, compared to the phonetical constancy of the word.

Did this ramble interest you? All I meant was you can have "new" words in an anglicized map, but, imho, you should make them sound at least a little english (as if the geographer "translated" the sounds).

Also, in my maps I try to make up some constant syllables. In a region I worked on recently in my con-world, I decided a lot of the cities would be named in a "City at XX River" structure - then that the word "city" would be "biday" and placed after the river name. Hence, Abibiday, Melabiday, Lamuabiday, etc... for extra flavour, I varied "biday" a little bit, as if a common language spanned the entire region in the past but gave rise to slight different words or sounds - Galbaday, Pashebdah, Sharibdeh. Of course, this is all for personal satisfaction, it made me satisfied with my invention, and it didn't exactly entail inventing a language.

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## Sarithus

I'm still not sure, to be honest. I think I might be missing something crucial. Let me see if I understand: So someone would arrive at a place and give it a name in their own language based on whatever, let's go with looks for simplicity. They call the river that has a lot of curves in it, 'Sathir'. The whole word Sathir/parts of it mean 'Bend' or something? Take the name, 'Taylor' or 'Baker', I'm not entirely sure what people mean when they say it comes from being a Tailor or that that person was once a baker. Was someone literally called Tailor after their job once and it eventually got changed to Taylor?

Extra question: I have Cilen Tureste and Cilen Antar, Thel Usir, Thel Xantir. Roughly, as obviously I haven't gone into real detail, cilen = Hills and Thel = Mount/Hill. What would I call hills if I wasn't doing it based on a language and I wasn't using descriptive names? I get naming rivers if I wasn't doing it on a language because it's just a name usually, but with hills it's two words or more. Would I just say that this was the hill of Xantir (xantir meaning something) but instead of putting Thel before it I'd just call it Xantir?

I'm so lost.  :Razz:

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## ChickPea

> The whole word Sathir/parts of it mean 'Bend' or something?


Yup, that's correct. If you want your river to have originally been named after its winding course, then yeah, Sathir will mean 'bend'. 




> Was someone literally called Tailor after their job once and it eventually got changed to Taylor?


That's exactly how it worked. As ever, Wikipedia is your friend. Read this article on Occupational Surnames.

I suspect the change in spelling of Taylor is one of those quirks of the English language. Until into the 1600s there was no standardisation on spelling. People spelled a word how they pronounced it, so with regional variations in accents, you'd get a lot of different spellings of the same word. Eventually, as spellings become standard, one version would become the 'correct' one, and it looks like, for names, the version with the 'y' won.




> What would I call hills if I wasn't doing it based on a language and I wasn't using descriptive names?


You can call it whatever you like. You really are over-thinking it.  :Smile:  Just look around in the real world. What are hills called? It could be Xantir Hill, Xantir Mount, Xantir Rise, Xantir Brae and probably a load of other names that I can't think of right now. There are no absolute rules with naming anything, so you can go with what feels right. Just ask yourself, how would the natives have referred to a place back in the mists of time? What would they call it to distinguish it from other geographical landmarks in the area? Use that as your root, and whether it's Xantir Hill or Hill of Xantir is down to common usage. 'Hill of ...' sounds more formal, so that might suit an important site. I can't see the locals saying "Hey, let's take a stroll up the Hill of Xantir".  :Wink:

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## Ghostman

Re: person names, you should know that having a family name is a fairly recent custom for most peoples of the world -- there are some exceptions, such as Chinese people that have used family names for a very long time, and Romans also used them. But before modern times it has been far more common to use patronymics (that is refering to someone as the 'son of X' or 'daughter of X') or bynames (often based on professions, such as 'X the barber' or 'X the miller') as the means to identify a person apart from those who bear the same name. So when family names started to be used (possibly due to a law that made it mandatory), a family either would have to decide on what to call themselves, or the community they live in would decide a name to call them by. Out of convenience, they might decide to base it on a byname. Eg. the family of Burt the Baker would adopt _Baker_ as their family name, thus being called Bakers from there on, and their descendants would inherit that name regardless of whether they actually continue to practice the profession of baking.

Re: extra question, a place name for a geographic feature such as a river or a mountain may or may not feature the descriptive word as part of it. Your example of Cilen Antar might be kept in it's full form, or it might be shortened to just Antar, depending on what antar means and whether it's actually a meaningful word in the language of those who use it. For example if antar was to mean, say "green", then Cilen Antar would be "green hills", and it could feel silly for the people to refer those particular hills as Antar because they'd literally just be saying "green". But if the meaning of the word antar were to be forgotten or otherwise unknown (being originally from a different language, for example) then it wouldn't feel unnatural for the people to refer to the hills simply as Antar.

This is not a hard and fast rule though. Consider, for example, the Rocky Mountains - they can be called "the Rockies" without it being confusing or sounding silly, even though it's just a plain word in english.

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## Azélor

> I'm still not sure, to be honest. I think I might be missing something crucial. Let me see if I understand: So someone would arrive at a place and give it a name in their own language based on whatever, let's go with looks for simplicity. They call the river that has a lot of curves in it, 'Sathir'. The whole word Sathir/parts of it mean 'Bend' or something? Take the name, 'Taylor' or 'Baker', I'm not entirely sure what people mean when they say it comes from being a Tailor or that that person was once a baker. Was someone literally called Tailor after their job once and it eventually got changed to Taylor?


Yes that's exactly it. The village could be called, ''where the river bends'' if it's an important feature. Take the city of Quebec, in Algonquin (native language) it means ''where the river gets narrow''. Of course, since we don't speak the language, the name doesn't sounds silly. 

Or take the city of Oxford, it's simply a contraction of : oxen + ford.
or take some chinese cities like : Bei + jing (Northern capital) and Nan + jing (southern capital), they kept the name even if it's not the capital anymore. 

Lastly, in the middle ages, only the nobility had last names, not common people. This is only true for medieval Europe. Roman had family names, Chinese too and probably other civilizations as well. Eventually, people started to have names according to where they lived or what job they had. The Taylor you mentioned is a good example of that. The family name of my mother is the name of a tree and the name of my father is the name of a place.


Edit:I just noticed the comment of Ghostman above me. It's possible that I repeated some of his points.

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