About mountain names
Many results arrive in French, like "les Sommets Infernal" and "la Montagne Évasement", alongside plainer English such as "The Distant Hill". Plural forms cover whole ranges while singular ones mark a lone summit, which matters when you label a map. Reserve the infernal and violent descriptors for peaks your party should not reach until late in the campaign.
How mountain names are built
Mountain names mix English descriptive templates with French ones. The English form builds The Distant Hill from a 138-entry adjective bank and a 17-entry landform bank, while the French patterns place a generic ahead of a descriptor, or glue a coined stem to a tail: Le Mont plus Cha plus noît gives Le Mont Chanoît. Two fragment banks of 536 and 276 entries feed a fragment-join before the landform word.
Le Mont Chanoît
le Mont (generic) + Cha (stem) + noît (tail)
French generic plus a two-part coined tail
The Distant Hill
Distant (adjective) + Hill (landform)
English adjective plus landform
Les Sommets Infernal
les Sommets (generic) + Infernal (descriptor)
French generic plus a descriptor
Naming notes
The landform word sets the scale: the English and French generics range from Hill to Mont to Volcan, so one generator covers a foothill or a great peak depending on the noun drawn. The French templates draw from a 24-entry generic bank and descriptor banks of 212 and 178 entries. Anchor a range on one register and let a single crossover name mark a contested summit.
Questions about mountain names
- Why are some mountain names in French?
- Several templates draw a French generic and a descriptor, producing forms like Le Mont Chanoît and Les Sommets Infernal alongside the English names.
- Can one generator name both a hill and a great peak?
- Yes. The landform noun sets the scale: Hill is small, Mont and Sommets are alpine, Volcan is volcanic, so the generic you draw decides the size.
- How do I name a whole range consistently?
- Keep one language register across the range, then use a single crossover name in the other language to mark a contested peak.