Place Name Generator

Real place names are almost always descriptions that have worn smooth. Ashcombe is an ash valley, Kirkenvik a church bay, Qasr al-Nur a castle of light, and Miller's Ford exactly what it says. A fictional place name convinces when it follows the same habit: take a feature of the land (water, hill, wood, marsh, rock), a use (mill, market, fort, quay, ford) or a founder, and attach the ending that the region would actually use, such as -combe, -by, -ford, -haven, -vik, -holm, -burg, -grad, -mura or -dong.

The names here cover the whole map. English and American towns and villages (Nettlecombe, Copper Creek, Prairie Bend) sit alongside Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Nordic, Slavic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Southeast Asian and Swahili-style places so a single world can have regions that sound different from each other. Coastal names mention the water (Saltreach Bay, Herring Quay); upland names mention rock and weather (Hawk's Tor, Frostbite Pass); fantasy regions (Thornmarch, The Greywold, Vaelmoor) use older, heavier sounds; and landmark names like The Weeping Arch or Gallows Hill give you the places characters actually talk about.

Pick by region first, then by size: big old settlements tend to have short names, while hamlets, crossings and farms keep the full descriptive phrase.