The fictional Scottish town of Hogsmeade, for example, takes the Celtic word ‘Hog’ (a common prefix in Harry Potter) and attaches it to ‘meade’. Rowling also employed this method in Harry Potter. What the place might be like, before they’ve even read any description. This means that the reader has a understanding of In these examples, I regularly attached a suffix to a word Heatherswick’s name was derived from the region’s nativeįlower, Heather, and the suffix ‘wick’ meaning town. British settlers reused the names for York, Jersey,įrom my own writing, I used names such as Heatherswick, Queenscarden, and Springbourne. American readers will undoubtably be aware of the use of In a lot of languages we usually describe places with a While I’m not suggesting you create your own languages to make names from, it just goes to show that you can make stuff up as you go along! 2. The forest of ‘Lothlorien’ in Lord of the Rings was derived from two Elvish words, ‘Loth’ and ‘Lorien’. J.R.R Tolkien (being the language wizard he was) also did this with his own Middle Earth languages. (specifically female friend), which I felt was a clever way to define what the In a recent workshop, one writer used the Latin term ‘Amica’įor their piece’s villainous social media platform. ‘Fyrendelle’, where ‘fyr’ comes from Old Norse for ‘fire’. In the project I am currently working on, I named theĬharacters who could use magic after various elements.įor example, my lead character is called ‘Eyr’, from the

They’re often obtuse, or spelt in ways which are archaic or redundant. Whether it’s Old Norse, Middle English, or Latin, I have a fascination with words we no longer really use. I’ll start with my favourite source for naming characters and places: Old Words. Inspiration may lie just a few scrolls away… 1. So if you find yourself sat before your notebook, typewriter or laptop wondering, ‘what on Earth am I going to name this person, or this place?’ then read on.

If you’re going to create a world, then you may as well own every part of it! So, what do you do? Use a name generator? Well yes, you could, but where’s the fun in that? If (like me) you’re not entirely in touch with reality, names for people and places are perhaps not as forthcoming as those who can set their stories in New York or Nottingham, and their characters being called Sue or Dave. This is a guest post by Mathew Gallagher.

Invent new word generator