Young Writers Society

Ok the story im writing has me making up a world. How would ya'll come up with names for towns and countries and other places. If you have a suggestion for a name id' like to hear it too.

Web sites, like babynames.com, have become my best friends. I tend to look for names that sound unique enough to work as the name of a place. http://rinkworks.com/namegen/ is a pretty good place to start. I wouldn't recommend http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ unless you're going to be able to differentiate which names they give are obviously just silly...although all of the ones those generators give are pretty silly, so I don't know if I'd really say it's a good site for it. They have links to other generators, though.

Think of a normal, everyday word, perphaps the name of a place, and then put it into an anagram maker. You can get some really funny names from there. Also, find words in different languages can be good.

You could always look in a map and take the names of different places. It doesn't have to sound fantasy-ish. The more realistic a place sounds, the better—at least for me it is.

I've always grown up in or near really small towns, and they have rather strange names...but the trick is that they're familiar, but not entirely recognizable. Take a drive off the interstate and you'll probably find the ones you need. ^_^

I look at my world/Europe map, pick a city/place that sounds interesting but that I've never heard of, and modify a few letters so that it sounds like a town my character could live in.

Pick up a road map, it's good when you're a trip too, and look at the places that are nearby. I did this on the way home from a holiday I'd been on once, and found tiny villages called Triangle and Sunk Island. It's fun ^^

Same way I choose my character names; take an ordinary word or name, and play around with it. (Bear turned into Byeran, for example).