Place Names

Whether it is a small town in West Virginia or a fantasy kingdom far, far away ... we all have to come up with names for our various places in our narratives, right?

God I struggle with this!

The current story I'm working on (and going to try to enter NaNo with) is a fantasy, and one main character lives in the Kingdom of ... Arcadia. Yes, really, Arcadia. Can it be any more cliche than that? Or please someone tell me that this is not as common as I think it is. Will only Spenserian geeks get the reference? (I'm no Spenserian geek; I just took ONE 16th century class.) But I actually reviewed an absolutely AWFUL book where this SUPER PERFECT main character lived in the SUPER PERFECT town of Arcadia, so that made me doubly embarrassed.

How do you guys come up with place names?

I look up Roman, Greek, Latin roots and suffixes and randomly put them together. Whether the places are like the definition of whatever I put together is a mystery.

I've been having some trouble with that also, a planet to be exact. I have a sci fi fan fic idea that is a crossover between Hetalia and novel series. In the story there is a planted that Germany and Italy live on now, I want it to have a name that some how signifies the combenation of the two, but have no idea how to even come up with something.

I tend to play around with places of real names and mix letters up, combine two or three different names of real locations, etc. 'Cept, I tend to do more modern and 'realistic' writing, so I use places of real names. I just make certain places within those towns or cities up.

I try to avoid naming places unless they deal with fanfiction. If it must have a name I look through my Grims Fairy tale books and my Aesop's stories to find inspiration in someone's name or even reuse a city or village name. Who said you couldn't recycle?

I normally resort to two of the other languages I speak aside from English. ^^ Right now, the made up places I have in my stories are Maisa and Duwa (which, basically translates to One and Two) Yes yes how unoriginal but hey, no one will know that unless they speak this particular language too.

Also, I do the whole four consonants and a vowel: Ex- M L K R and A = Malkara hmm now that sounds like a faraway place that's waiting to be discovered. ^^ hope that helped.