About city names
Unpolished, results like "Shofburg", "Wunwell", and "Izacstead" borrow real suffixes such as -burg and -stead while scrambling the front halves. That familiar tail keeps them plausible on a road atlas even when the opening sounds invented. Test your pick in a sentence of dialogue before committing it to the map.
How city names are built
City names compound a toponym stem with a real English settlement suffix. Two stem pools (220 everyday stems like Ash, Crane and Sorrel, plus 147 grander ones like Osten, Morrow and Garron) meet 48 attested endings such as -caster, -mere, -don and -stead, and one roll in four adds a directional prefix, producing North Greendon, Garroncaster and Sorrelset.
North Greendon
North (directional prefix) + Green (toponym stem) + don (settlement suffix, hill)
Garroncaster
Garron (toponym stem, second pool) + caster (settlement suffix, Roman fort)
Sorrelset
Sorrel (toponym stem) + set (settlement suffix, dwelling)
Naming notes
The endings carry real English toponymy (bridge, burgh, combe, minster, thorpe, wick), so results sit comfortably on a map beside real places. The second stem pool trades homely for stately: Quellenton and Ostencester read as older seats, while Ashford and Foxwell read as market towns. Prefixes (North, Nether, Little, High) are the quickest way to imply a paired or split settlement.
Questions about city names
- Why do these sound English?
- The suffix bank is real English toponymy: -caster and -chester mark Roman forts, -thorpe and -by are Norse settlements, -combe is a valley, -minster a church seat. Borrowing real morphology is what makes an invented map feel lived-in.
- How do I name a capital versus a village?
- Pull from the stately stem pool and heavier suffixes (Ostencester, Quellenminster) for seats of power; homely stems with -well, -ford or -stead (Foxwell, Ashford) read as villages. A directional prefix implies the town it split from.
- Will I get duplicates?
- With 367 stems, 48 endings and optional prefixes the space runs past twenty thousand distinct names, so repeats inside one campaign are unlikely; reroll or swap the suffix if two towns land too close.