It's relatively easy to name a character because I can simply choose a name that fits their personality, but what about naming a place? Places don't really have personalities which is what makes it rather hard for me to name them. So, how do you go about naming places in your world? Or even the world itself?

Bethany Faith

It depends. I have been known to bang keys and see if I can come up with something that sounds all right, but that rarely works. It is usually a slightly random process for me, though; I throw together syllables, letter combinations I like, etc.

I usually think of the name of a place or geological feature nearby and then start a series of slight changes to the name to come up with the name.

For Example:
I wanted to come up with a name for a bay so I took the name of the island the bay is a part of (Enst) and the prime geological feature of the island (trees) and changed Enst to Ents to Trees to Tron to Trong finally coming up with the name-- The Bay of Trong.

I modify and cannibalize words from other languages I speak

eruheran

I have the same problem! I don't really have a solution so I end up with a lot of boring locations like the Capital, the Citadel, the Village, the Mountains, etc.

Usually I base them off the general feel of the language It was named in, and then give it a meaning. Occasionally, if the meaning would be easily translatable into English, I translate it. Like Blue Valley, or Rings. I never had any unusual trouble with place names as opposed to character names fortunately.

Wine.

For my fantasy world, I roamed the wine aisles of my grocery store, getting extremely freaked-out looks from passerby. And I gathered dozens of names. Which, incidentally, all made them into my novel.

Yeah, I'm weird. But it works! I have variations of the wine names, mostly--Erathna, for one. But then I have Lockwood, and Cambria...

Okay, yes, I'll stop rambling now.

That's a neat idea, Renn.

Wow, that's really cool, Renna. I usually don't have trouble coming up with names, but that would definitely add some variety.

ooooh... That is definitely a neat idea about looking through a wine aisle. I'll have to try that out sometime.

Wines do have some really cool names.