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

From:Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 17, 2002, 21:18
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) 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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Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...>