The fantasy world I'm working on has no name yet, but when I do name it, it will probably be something along the lines of 'earth'; just something pertaining to the very fundaments of nature on which human and humanlike cultures depend. Then I might translate this into the different tongues of the world.

The nations, however, have names. Weird names just enter my head, and if I like the sound of them, I use them for whatever region they suit. A few of the languages in my world are under development and they are never based solely on one real world language, so pretty much everything sounds pretty 'foreign' and yet, at times, familiar (since I don't really try to invent new phonemes, haha). At any rate, most of these names popped up before any of the languages had been defined at all, so I retroactively give them meaning, using the names to 'activate' the vocabularies.
Also, the larger or more important a region is, the more likely is it that I will try sticking to names that are easy to remember and to pronounce, while truly complex names still are viable for less 'central' locations.

Apart from that, I'm highly 'simulationist' in that I really don't care whether English speakers or (as in the case with most of my friends) Swedish speakers find the names challenging.
To illustrate my perspective: I have a hard time pronouncing (or merely grasping the fundamental ortography of) for example Romanian, even though it is an Indo-European language with a lot in common with, for example, Italian, French and Latin (all of which are languages we come across frequently for a number of reasons). On a completely different level we have the vast majority of languages that aren't even remotely related to English or Swedish.
Thus, I believe that in a 'realistic' fantasy world it is nigh inconceivable that all of the place names would be easy to grasp for the average person.
Personally, I feel that for example Al-Qahirah is much preferrable to Cairo (one and the same). I have names like this in my world (not Arabic, but distinctly non-European). The Q represents a phoneme in its own right and to replace this with something more 'Germanic-friendly' makes zero sense in a fantasy world, I think.

I didn't mean for this devolve into a linguistic discussion but there you have the basis of my perspective.
If I want a name to convey a 'cold' feel, I don't have to look to ancient Norse or Greenlandic, because the very sounds of a name (that I can make up instead of assembling from real world names) can convey it. If, on the other hand, I specifically wanted to convey an unmistakably ancient Norse feel, well... I wouldn't.

I am in complete agreement with this post.


My fantasy book series involves someone from Earth traveling to the world of Eurydice, and so I have gone to great lengths to describe the biology, the anthropology, and the philology of the world.


For obvious reasons, it would definitely be a little difficult for the protagonist if nobody spoke English, and there would be an entire first part of the book that would be spent in confusion trying to learn the local language where he's at. I mean, it's possible to learn a language through immersion this way, it's how I learned Scottish Gaelic, but it's difficult and time consuming and it would take away from the story. For this reason, I have come up with an elaborate justification as to why English is spoken at all on Eurydice, even if it is done so in a different form (no Latin words or morphemes).


The languages in the world sometimes descend from languages spoken on Earth (as my protagonist certainly isn't the only person to have traveled to Eurydice), such as the Parnaslo languages and the Polavian languages (descended from Proto-Dravidian and Pre-Proto-Celtic, respectively), but by and large are not affiliated with languages from Earth, and are not going to be easy to pronounce for my readers or for the characters. For example Ha'axli'misiniuxn (pronounced: χəʔaɬɪʔmɪsɪɲʊχn) was the first Prassian dictator to have his entire country bought out from under him by Klaliś Tolororþin (pronounced: klɑlɪʃ tɔlɔɾɔɾθɪn) during the Prassian Unification.


Obviously these names, especially the first one, aren't going to be all that easy for readers to pronounce, and neither will the names of important characters in the first book, like Karáxos (karáɕɔs), Ackpräd (ʌ́tɕkpʰɾæd), Óroxek (ɔ́rɔɕɛkʰ), Xexyre (ɕɪɕýre), and Cyris (tɕýɾɪs). But that's just the natrue of the beast, in my opinion. In order to make my world as believable as possible, especially in the context of someone from Earth visiting it, I think it's the best way.


Now, how I come by these names is actually really random. In the past few days since I joined this forum, I've found one of the fantasy name generators to be particularly useful, and actually three out of the five aforementioned character names in the first book come from it. In the past though, I've done a lot of things. Sometimes I'll go to Mark Rosenfelder's Metaverse and look at random numbers from different languages and compound different parts of them or change the vowels/consonants up a bit or even use them backwards. One name for my book series at least was made in this way - Irunjik, who is the Turanese conqueror of what used to be Greater Parnasla (a historical figure in the books). I want to say that it's based off of a number in a South American language? I'm not really sure. Multiple names for characters that will appear later in my alternate history timeline 'The Fox and the Ptarmigan' were made this way as well, such as the royal title 'Haroapo', which will be used in the Patpatarangi Empire on the Pacific Coast of North America, and Patpatarangi names like Namwan, Nenjepar, Morambo, Drijare, and Upoirarai.


Sometimes I also use compounded, chopped, and/or metathesized phrases from languages that I speak. The placename Ś’oqlarínathś (ʃʔɔqɬəɾí:nəθʃ) is actually from the Scottish Gaelic phrase "seolta ri sionnach" which means "sly as a fox". The name Óroxek, who is the grandfather of my protagonist's love interest interest in the first book actually gets his name from the Spanish word 'tesoro' spelled backwards. It was originally Óroxet (the /x/ corresponding to the fricative sound in the Drucpel language), but I only recently changed the /t/ to a /k/ when speaking the language to myself on the toilet when I decided that final /t/'s become /k/'s in Central Drucpel dialects because I liked the sound better. That came from the name of the gas station. Then of course the art of rsesu (pronounced: ʂɛ́su: ), or traditional Prassian tattooing, comes from "users" spelled backwards with the /s/ and the /r/ reversed according to Prassian spelling of the retroflex fricative. I got it off a sign somewhere.


The name of the region of Pras comes from Prussia, and the city of Zraice (dzɾɔɪtʃ), in the region of Polavia in the Province of Lesser Svipur comes from the Thracian word Zrayka. I'm not quite sure where Svipur came from, but Polavia is based off of Colovia, as these books were originally being written for the Elder Scrolls series until somebody beat me to writing a book for them... now it's my own thing.


I'm kind of all over the place with my naming, as you can see, but it's gotten me pretty far in the process. I say don't be picky about where you draw your inspiration. It could be from a street sign, an instructional sign, something you misheard, baby talk, etc. Just let it come to you.