This week: Place Names Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.
—Patrick Geddes
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot |
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Have you ever looked at a river, mountain, city, road, country, building, or whatever, and wondered how it got its name?
Some are obvious, certainly. Long Island is a long island. The Equator runs through Ecuador. That sports arena was named after whoever paid them enough money.
But others, not so much. Some places sound like someone strung a few semi-random syllables together, but that's because we don't know the language. Consequently, when creating a map for fantasy world-building (or a star/planet chart for science fiction universe-building), there's a tendency to string semi-random syllables together.
There's nothing wrong with that. I do it when I'm out of ideas. But in our consensus reality, a place name usually has a history, so your fantasy place name probably should, too. In general, a culture might name a certain geographic feature or settlement something meaningful in its own language. Time passes, language changes, conquering happens, and often, the place name remains the same, but the meaning is lost or ignored.
For example, consider the Mississippi River. From what I've been able to find, the word "Mississippi" is the Anglicization of an Algonquian phrase that means, unsurprisingly, Big River. So when you talk about the Mississippi River, you're really saying "Big River River."
In that instance, we have some idea where it comes from. But something like Rome? The mythology is that it came from Romulus, purportedly the city's founder. The actual origin of the name isn't known for certain.
Sometimes, you get a place name that no longer makes sense. Like the always-popular Springfield. Known now mostly as the fictional setting for The Simpsons, it was chosen for that because of the near-ubiquity of the name in the US, so it could be located nearly anywhere in the country. I've heard it said that there's a Springfield in every US state, but I haven't confirmed this; in any case, it's pretty common.
So one can imagine that, perhaps, some settlers came upon a field containing a spring, or several of them. With a good source of water, they started building nearby. More people meant more wells sucking water out of the local aquifer. The springs dried up, and possibly their original location was forgotten. Someone probably paved it over and built townhouses, without even realizing its significance.
Or maybe someone from a Springfield founded another settlement elsewhere, and just named it after their home.
I don't know if any of the above reflects history; I'm just using this as an example of how a place might get its name.
Similarly, you might have a "Wolf Creek," but the last wolf was eliminated from the area a hundred years ago. Or was it named after John Wolf, who fell into it while exploring, so his friends wanted to immortalize his embarrassment?
Which leads me to another common source for place names: from a person's name, sometimes with a suffix like -ville or -burg or whatever. Further complicating things, the person involved may have been named after the town their ancestors were from.
One thing to consider is that the name of a place may be different, sometimes very different, in different languages. For example, what we know as Germany is known to its inhabitants as Deutschland, and to the French as Allemagne. None of those names are even close to being similar to each other.
In any case, I'd recommend giving some thought to your place names. For practice, maybe look up some locations around you and see if you can figure out where the names came from. If nothing else, doing so can provide some perspective on your location and its history, and it can perhaps help you come up with fantasy place names as well. |
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Last time, in "Artificial Intelligence" , I talked about the history of AI in writing.
oldgreywolf scribbles  : Have you read Karel CAPEK's "R.U.R>", or Jack WILLIAMSON's "With Folded Hands"?
((Now I find out WILLIAMSON expanded that into 2 Humanoid novels. Now on order.))
R.U.R. is, of course, the story (a stage play) that introduced English speakers to the word "robot." And to the concept of the robot uprising.
Paul  : I’ve been reading SF and Fantasy since I learned to read by making my mother read me The Wizard Of Oz until I’d memorized all the words. SF and I became siblings shortly thereafter and I spent years fighting space battles and dealing with rabid robots.
Could AI become a demonic presence in our world? Maybe, but I think it would have to be actively promoted and built to be that. Not that there aren’t certain elements and individuals in our society capable of doing it. But, it could as easily become a true benefactor and prove to be as, or more, compassionate as any person, church or god.
I think that we will make of it what the power structures wish it to be, just as we have always done historically.
Control of the population is what power wants.
As long as we're waxing philosophical, I think that, perhaps, what some people fear most in AI is not that it will be inhuman, but that it will be human.
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  : Warforged from D&D setting Eberron, created from enchanted wood, metal, and stone, their initial purpose was to augment/supplement a county's armed forces. With the end of the war, many try to find a new purpose. Some serve as city guards, others perform dangerous jobs, and some try to learn what living really means.
Artificial beings are a staple of FRPGS.
So that's it for now. See you next time! Until then,
DREAM ON!!!
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Fantasy: May 03, 2023 Issue [#11941]
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