I've always loved old maps and atlases, but I recently found a great new use for them. I'd like to think that I'm good at coming up with invented names for my stories, but sometimes I feel as though they're all too similar. This isn't a problem if they're in different worlds or in the future where influences could come from anywhere--but when you're trying to produce distinct national cultures (such as in a fantasy world) it can be a problem.
While working on my master map for my fantasy universe I recently started turning to one of my atlases. It is of course a Hammond atlas (historically they're my favourite company and I must have a dozen distinct volumes by now), a New Era Atlas of the World from 1945 (though some of the information predates the end of World War II, therefore I naturally assume that as is the custome today the information must be from the end of 1944 when it was likely printed and sold). To come up with more gutteral germanic names I turned to the map of Germany and started pulling names and parts of names off of the map to name cities--then I turned to France and did the same for a neighboring region. Today I'm trying to come up with names for Eastern tribes, so I'm turning to the map of East Asia.
~Matt
1 comment:
That is a good method. When Fib was home we were playing Boggle and I was jotting down some great name ideas, along with my real words. I will have to keep you in mind and send some your way.
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