How do I come up with names for fictional kingdoms?

[JohnSm123]

I want to write a medieval fantasy story. Game of Thrones style, but more focused on sex. The main settings are two kingdoms and their capitals.

What should I call them? Is it OK if I use names from real, historical places? The world is totally fictional, not our Earth.

 

[Altissimus]

Tell you what. How about you actually write the damn thing and then an idea might occur to you.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

There are name generators online that could help you. They can generate the names of people, places, countries... Or you could just use your own imagination Shouldn't be too hard to come up with the names of two countries and two capitals.

 

[AchtungNight]

Think about the themes for each kingdom. Incest-land and Gaytopia come easily to mind. [ducks thrown fruit]

 

[JaxRhapsody]

What he said. I have a fantasy novel I'm working on and I didn't think of the countries name until well into the story and out of like four of the places they visited so far- only one of them did I come up with a town name before they got there.

 

[Rustyoznail]

John, I've written a couple of stories and came up with names for places and beings using my...



Take an existing name and change the vowels would also work.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Whenever I write fantasy, I anchor the setting, characters, and aesthetics to periods in real history. I tend not to completely fabricate names. If my story is based in Roman times, the names will be Romanesque (sometimes, as Russ suggested, changing around the vowels in an existing name).
So try that out. Try thinking about a period in history that fascinates you, and twisting real names from that period to suit your characters/places.
Good luck!

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Or if that's too much work, then ask ChatGPT to come up with the names for you... you could even ask ChatGPT to write your story for you

 

[PrincessArianrhod]

There's my my morning amusement hit sorted anyway.

Fancy expecting a less than scornful answer from this bunch of reprobates. Honestly...

 

[CyranoJ]

I want to write a medieval fantasy story. Game of Thrones style, but more focused on sex. The main settings are two kingdoms and their capitals.

What should I call them? Is it OK if I use names from real, historical places? The world is totally fictional, not our Earth.

To give you the serious worldbuilders' answer: do a little online research about how real places were named (or how real people were named, because sometimes places are named after real or fictional people), focusing on the kind of cultures that would be analogous to what exists in your story. Make up names following those patterns.

If you're tempted to make up a kind of bare-bones language as a context for how those names are derived, and maybe how they change across the centuries, there are lots of resources for conlangers online. Look into those, maybe make a grammar for two or three or four languages...

... or twelve...

... and then derive whole language trees. Write some epic poetry in your languages, create a detailed historical atlas of your setting, and then just keep doing more and more of that and never, ever write the stories.

Or you can choose to stop at any point in that cycle and actually write the stories you planned.

 

[AlinaX]

You can invent names and even languages just by playing around and avoiding anything that is too familiar. You might have a city called Parsi, for example, but that might sound lazy, while Pizrha wouldn't. Lebnir? Voksam?

Or you could avoid such nonsense and just have 'The White City'. In my current series I have Port Alba, Lliria and Crossroads in amongst Saruz, Denkar, Iskreti and dozens of other made up places.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Biggus Diccus and Pussigalore

 

[TheSpleen]

Dang, y'all showing no mercy to John

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I enjoy making up names, either using alliteration or other means.

These won't necessarily work for an erotic fantasy, but in a recent middle-grade book I had published, the summer camp was described as being built and run by an Austrian family that had immigrated to the U.S.

They named it Camp Hackenspit. The cabins at the camp were named "Skrachiebutz", "Pimmpelnöz", "Smeleepitz", and "Gaarglenoyz". (Hey, adolescent kids get a kick out of them)

What types of words that fit the world in your story would your target audience find interesting? Xanadont? Hasgard?

 

[onehitwanda]

Tell you what. How about you actually write the damn thing and then an idea might occur to you.

Who needs his fwuffy tummy tickled. Who does? You! You do! Come here and have some tummy tickles!

 

[Altissimus]

Who needs his fwuffy tummy tickled. Who does? You! You do! Come here and have some tummy tickles!

Awwwwwwww...

...ok.

 

[ericrodman101]

Kingdom backwards is Modgnik. Sounds fictional to me.

 

[Rustyoznail]

No, seriously John, the first thing is to decide what language you are using. For the Anocots in my Tales of Leinyere, they are cat-like beings with a lot of hiss/growl words. They are also very direct. "None of those flowery Eleven names for us". Fscilwite - First Port. Rrmwite - New Port.

Have a look at this thread. https://forum.literotica.com/thread...-story-event-official-support-thread.1570626/. It might give you some ideas.

Good luck with it!

 

[Cagivagurl]

I want to write a medieval fantasy story. Game of Thrones style, but more focused on sex. The main settings are two kingdoms and their capitals.

What should I call them? Is it OK if I use names from real, historical places? The world is totally fictional, not our Earth.

Anagrams????? England.... Danglen

 

[SimonDoom]

I was going to say something, but there's already a lot of very good advice here, among the occasional mild snark and goofiness.

Spend a little time building the cultures of the two kingdoms. Is one good and one bad? Then think about how the names sound to you. Seek some consistency within each consistency, so the names sound like they might be part of the same language. We tend to associate sonorous, vowelly sounds with good and harsh consonants with bad.

Pick two countries that exist on Earth and then come up with names that sound somewhat like the languages of those countries. If you picked Poland and Italy, for example, you could come up with place and character names that sound distinctive and very different.

 

[Djmac1031]

Um... throw some Scrabble tiles on the floor?

 

[Altissimus]

Anagrams????? England.... Danglen

United States of America - Desert Oasis of a Mutant

 

[onehitwanda]

United States of America - Desert Oasis of a Mutant

Better Nate than Lever!

 

[ElectricBlue]

Place scrabble pieces on a Ouija board and ask questions.

Seriously though, you need a committee to do this?

 

[KachinaDoll]

Don't fret over it. I sometimes write stories with xxxxx, yyyyy, etc for character names. Eventually a name will come. A place name doesn't have to be oscure or unpronounceable. Many places were named after a geographical feature or event in history. Here in England, Exmouth is at the mouth of the River Exe, Newhaven is a port. The village of Battle is at the site of the Battle of Hastings.