The Name Thread

[Señor Leetz]

I think I'm going to go with the Primes. Primes, Mysteries, and Hero-Cults.

[Ghostman]

I could use some name brainstorming help on my newly posted setting stub, Astral Blades. Starting with the name of the setting itself, in fact.

"Astral Blades" is something I made up really quick, just so I would have something to type in the new thread's subject field. I'm not sure how well that would work as a setting name. At least it's more interesting than calling it "The Galaxy". How could I go about coming up with a good, descriptive name?

Another, perhaps even bigger concern I have is with the "Champions". That's the word I'm currently using to refer to the feudal military-magocracy that rules over the much larger populations of peasants in practically all the civilized realms of the known worlds. I'm less than happy with this name but it's the best I've been able to come up with so far, and I've given this one much more thought than to the setting's own title. In fact, if I had a really good and fitting name for these guys, I might even use that for the setting's title as well. While I could always make up some fancy sounding but ultimately meaningless word, that's not quite what I want. I'd much rather use a real word.

[Nomadic]

Ghostman

I could use some name brainstorming help on my newly posted setting stub, Astral Blades. Starting with the name of the setting itself, in fact.

"Astral Blades" is something I made up really quick, just so I would have something to type in the new thread's subject field. I'm not sure how well that would work as a setting name. At least it's more interesting than calling it "The Galaxy". How could I go about coming up with a good, descriptive name?

Another, perhaps even bigger concern I have is with the "Champions". That's the word I'm currently using to refer to the feudal military-magocracy that rules over the much larger populations of peasants in practically all the civilized realms of the known worlds. I'm less than happy with this name but it's the best I've been able to come up with so far, and I've given this one much more thought than to the setting's own title. In fact, if I had a really good and fitting name for these guys, I might even use that for the setting's title as well. While I could always make up some fancy sounding but ultimately meaningless word, that's not quite what I want. I'd much rather use a real word.

I like your take on a galactic web of magocracies. When considering names for them I think you should consider how magic is used and viewed in your setting. Is it ritual? Vancian? Psionic? Wrapped in religion? Considering how magic works and how it is viewed will help you in naming its practitioners (and in turn your setting).

[Señor Leetz]

For the single nation, D&D heavy setting ive been pondering about, how does the name Tessere (teh-SEER) fit for the capital and main city of the kingdom. Somewhat southern, in the winter its cold, but no snow, but close enough to the coast where its not very hot either, lots of rain and green in the winter, but dry and golden in the summer. Port city. Solid but open architechture, lots of bronze. and reddish stone.

[Ghostman]

Tessere seems a fine choise of name, especially if the city has a square layout, or even just a strict rectangular street plan.

[Kindling]

In Dark Silver I have a province of the Severim Empire that was, until recently, called Sylvarnum. I've decided I need to change the name, because it sounds a bit like Silver-num, and what with the word silver being in the name of the whole setting it makes it seem like that one province is maybe a bit more important than it is. I originally chose Sylvarnum as being somewhat derived from sylvan, as it is a heavily forested province. It is also the most recent addition to the empire, and the most rebellious, with numerous petty warlords constantly making power plays, not only against the Severim but also between themselves. I'd quite like to keep the name kind of similar sounding, if only because it has already been mentioned in play, including one player having a character from there (although she only joined us for one session) so it would feel weird having a sudden huge change in what it's called.

EDIT: Also, I like the name Tessere, although when I first read it I assumed a TESS-er-uh or TESS-er-ay pronunciation, not teh-SEER.

[Ghostman]

The word "sylvan" comes from the Roman forest-god Silvanus / latin word silva, meaning forest.

Assuming that you want to keep the name based on that, but to avoid the likeness to silver, then here's some suggestions:

• Sylvanica
• Sylvanis
• Sylvium
• Sylviana

[Señor Leetz]

Or using a word like "arbol" in it could work (spanish for tree), like Arbolus or Arbolia. Bosque means forest too, if you wanted to mutate that a bit. Or look at the word tree in fairly common foreign languages, so that it may sound familiar to us, but we're not sure why.

[Superfluous Crow]

Some variation of Bosquaria/Boskaria/Boscharia could probably work quite well. Maybe Abolerium?
For Sylvan derivations:
Sylantria
Ursylvarium
Sylerium

[Steerpike]

You could just drop the 'r.' Sylvanum.  Or Sylvanium.  Both sound rather Roman.

How about Sylvane, Sylvemark, Sylvanheim, Sylvanfold, Sylvanydd, or Sylvanhold?

Is there a "cultural flavour" or set of flavours you want to evoke?

[Light Dragon]

Selenium perhaps?
Silician...

Probably not the line of words youare seeking, but maybe...depends on if your players are into Italy or into the periodic table of the elements.

[Señor Leetz]

So Arga is close to making a comeback, but I'm stuck on names - I'm sure you can all understand. But it's not that I can't think of names. I have plenty of names from all the incarnations, I'm just not sure how many to use.

Should I focus on a handful of massive, unique city-states, weeks and even months apart or use clusters of cities with a shared "culture"? If I go with the first option, then names aren't that big of a deal, but if I choose the second route, I want the names to be similar with each group, but not so similar that it's boring.

I guess this post is less about names than setting direction, but I digress...

[Kindling]

Currently, I like the idea of the big unique city states, just because of the economy of ideas involved. Like, say you're gonna have somewhere that's like fantasy-Egyptian or whatever. You have X number of cool ideas about stuff to put in your fantasy-Egyptian place. So you either make a whole fantasy-Egypt nation with like X different cities, each with one cool idea that the city is kind of based around, or you just make one fantasy-Egyptian city-state with all the cool ideas in one place. Then, if the plot requires travel between multiple urban locations all belonging to the fantasy-Egyptian culture, you can just invent bland little satellite-settlements nearby that obviously don't have any unique cool ideas because they're little more than glorified outskirts of the big metropolis.

This is actually something I've been thinking about a fair bit lately and will probably implement this set-up myself when/if I write up a region of Dark Silver with major cities in it.

[Señor Leetz]

I was thinking along those lines myself, except it leaves the map somewhat empty feeling, but I suppose that is sort of the feeling I want with Arga, lots of empty, wild space.

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

Señor Leetz

I was thinking along those lines myself, except it leaves the map somewhat empty feeling, but I suppose that is sort of the feeling I want with Arga, lots of empty, wild space.

Well, you can always throw in some more terrain details on the map if it's just looking empty.  Or perhaps map out a handful of little border towns that aren't the crux of anything.

Other things you could put on the map to fill it out:

• Sites of old battles
• Mysterious or dangerous places
• Military outposts
• Trade Routes

Alternatively, you could make a map on the pretext that it once belonged to someone.  It could have a diagram of this person's travel routes, and notes jotted down about what he found on his travels.  I actually might do this myself....