Re: CHAT: Ability of Americans & Europeans to locate each others cities

Roberto Suarez wrote:
>
>On Sep/17/2002, Clint Jackson Baker wrote:
>
> > When all else fails, say "Springfield"! (Most common
>
>         Speaking about city names: what are the
>names/strategy/structure/algorithm (if any) people use here for toponyms
>in their concultures/conworlds/conlangs? (yes/I/like/slashes/:-D)
Very many countries, planets, cities etc in my main coniverse have names
that were invented before the relevant language was even partially invented.
Some of these have been reanalyzed into something meaningful (sometimes with
slight modifications), but many remain. I blame them on substrates!

Some are quite transparent formations, eg _Taireza_ is "Earth (_Taia_)
country (_reze_)", _Nek Mestsai_ is "Ship-girl's spaceport" (_nek_
"spaceport", _Mestsai_ genitive of _Mestsa_, fem name derived from _mest_
"spaceship" and feminine ending _-za_), _Spontelzad_ can be interpreted
either as "Cape Hunter" or "Cape Cruiser" (_spont-el_, lit "hunt-er", being
the designation for a class of military spaceship). _Platja^na Ratshin_ is
"Armoured Land".

Some are perfectly regular but extremely non-transparent formations, eg
_Gzládeil_ is "Hawk's Nest" (cf _kezel_ "hawk" and _deil_ "nest, den").

                                                 Andreas

>         I think the deep motivation of the question is more to see
>strange or humorous names people gave to this places in their conlangs,
>more than anything else ;-) I've used a few different strategies in
>Unahoban (specially since the names were formed before the language had
>any meaning O:-)):
>
>         - Names of people from old tales ("Lhoena", after a maiden's
>           name)
>         - Expressions of people about the country ("Ish'ein", "Plain
>           land")
>         - Good ol' compound names ("Imiroshtu", "Cloudy Sky";
>           "Aumunlunnin", "Roots of Stone")
>         - Some souvenir from the place in question ("Gish", "Sand"; the
>land
>           is almost totally covered by a desert)
>
>         And then I have a lot more that I haven't yet "reverse
>engineered" or modified to have any meaning at all O:-)
>
>         This really is a field where just copying real life would give a
>lot of good examples. Many of the names of towns have that kind of
>"compound names" that can be easily translated into a conlang and become
>a nice name for a fantastic place :-) Indeed, there are a few here in
>Galicia that would make for some nifty (and/or funny) names:
>"Compostela" (from "Campus Stellae", "Field of Stars"), Valdoviño
>("Valley of the Wine"), "Lobeira" ("Wolf's burrow", or maybe "Wolf's
>hole"), "Ardemil" ("A thousand burn"; I think it refers to a legend of a
>muslim army that was burnt there) ... I'm sure every language has their
>anecdotic names to tell :-)
>
>--
>         Roberto Suarez Soto



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