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TheOOB
2009-08-02, 04:23 AM
I'm starting a new D&D 4e campaign on Friday, and I'm making my own campaign setting. I got a bunch of ideas, but I suck with coming up with names, so I was wondering if I could get some help.

So far I need a name for the European style country the game will mostly take place in, the dwarven nordic style country to the north, the Greco-Roman rival country to the east. I also need a name for the current king and queen of the european country, and of hero turned demi-god turned goddess that created the european country and is now their primary diety.

Any help would be appreciated.

Avor
2009-08-02, 04:42 AM
For Greco-Roman, Icaria. Yaars ago I made up Icarai as a place, but whem I was realy bpaed and I gppgled it, turns out there is a greek island woth that name, but they spell it with a k.

Raum
2009-08-02, 11:25 AM
I tend to name campaigns after a recurring theme ('Unexpected Gifts', 'Blood at Dusk', etc) or a location central to the campaign ('Haunted Casino', etc). I try to use the name as a personal reminder...keep coming back to the theme or location involved. Preferably in unexpected ways. :smallwink:

For other names I have two general methods:
- Pick a modern name and mangle it.
- Pick a term describing the person / object and translate it into another language.

Mando Knight
2009-08-02, 12:27 PM
I have another way:
Open a random book, and randomly point to a name. The Bible works great for this if you have one around, especially Acts, what with Paul traveling about the Mediterranean.

Raewyn
2009-08-02, 12:42 PM
When I'm looking for names for fantasy things, I take this translator (http://www.fantasyrole.org/learn_trans.asp) and put in (usually random) words until I like the sound of one (or a few mashed together).

Ya Ta Hey!
2009-08-02, 01:29 PM
Lucky you, that's the most fun part of world creation.

The Giant himself has an entire series of articles about homebrew world creation that might help, so here's a link to his thoughts on naming and geography (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/ieXLOFKij6eMmNIwTcy.html).

Thing to remember is that every region had to be discovered and settled at some point in time and that its name was chosen for some reason.

Its good to have some historical context to go with the cultural flavor of your name. Failing to do this runs the risk of confining your thinking and making very one-dimensional places--Don't make the mistake of naming your regions exclusively through "Match the Language", especially if you have any warfare or migration in your history. Places get conquered, assimilated and renamed all the time, and nowhere has this been more consistently true than Europe.

dragoonsgone
2009-08-02, 02:08 PM
The King formerly know prince and the queen formerly known as that hussy who will never be good enough for my son(at least by the former queen)

Elfin
2009-08-02, 02:51 PM
European country:
Talmenar, Elmerand, Aldhanar, Theltar, Kelmar, Ardanor.
Alternately:Use these on their own, or add The Empire of- before. Greymoor, Blackheath, Ironhame, Greycastle

Greco-Roman: Byzantar, Ephesar, Narcissinor, Sparia, Olyria, Knossanar

Nordic- Navrost, Forundyr, Karrost, Kalgard, Njormark, Njordr, Ktharusk

Eldariel
2009-08-02, 02:59 PM
What does "European" mean here? Every single European folk has completely different language, completely different naming conventions and so on, so being more specific helps. West European or East? Any specific people?

I could certainly help you with Finnish names, but I reckon that's not what you're seeking. Nordic ones are really easy and blend into Germanic names pretty well, though with more of an edge and a different written form. Just read a bit of Nibelung's Ring from Wagner and you'll have all you need for that.


Really, the problem here is that we've really got two language families in west Europe in Germanic and Romance languages, and thus they'd either be close to the Greco-Roman names or the Nordic names in spoken form (written form varies wildly and indeed, is easy to customize by just adopting certain letters for certain phonemes that might not even constitute their own phonemes in other languages; take the different modern Nordic languages for example, all of them employ a slightly different set of characters).


On a sidenote, the European names given above seem very much like Latin to me (or rather, Quenya, but sticking to natural languages here), which would rather tie them to the Greco-Roman empire to a degree.

Elfin
2009-08-02, 03:06 PM
Quenya is basically what I was going for; although it's modeled after Finnish, I assumed that the OP meant "standard fantasy" when he said European. My apologies if this was incorrect.
In addition, I thought that the Greco-Roman flavor gave the names depth, showing that the names had evolved out of the older empire.

Thinker
2009-08-02, 03:27 PM
When I am coming up with a culture for a campaign setting, one of the first things I do is decide on a few related languages that I will use to draw words and names of people and places from. Just because a culture is based on European (I assume you mean Western European) doesn't mean it has to have Romantic or Nordic words, it could have Slavic, Celtic, Indo-Iranian, or other words. Just keep it consistent. For help with this I use http://wordgumbo.com/index.htm for lexicons of various language groups and http://www.behindthename.com/ (particularly the Random Renamer) for that. I also often include purposeful perversions to represent slight changes in dialect.

As for using a language group, if you choose Celtic, you may want to use Welsh for most of the names and words, but then use Irish for some specific locality. I also name regions after words meaning place, country, land, home, etc.

Eldariel
2009-08-02, 03:33 PM
Quenya is basically what I was going for; although it's modeled after Finnish, I assumed that the OP meant "standard fantasy" when he said European. My apologies if this was incorrect.

The grammar is modeled after Finnish, the words are derived from Celtic language and Latin :smallsmile: (and of course, since Finnish and Latin grammar are quite similar on a fundamental level, one could argue that the grammar of Quenya is taken equally from both sources) But yeah, if he meant "Standard Fantasy", that's of course a great selection.

I assumed he meant "Middle-Western Europe" as in the Gaullian areas from the Roman era but could be wrong and yeah, clarification would be cool.