Worlds & places
Name the places people use, argue over, leave behind, and find their way back to.
52 tools to explore
Houses
Name the feature a visitor would actually use as a landmark.
Choose the feature a visitor can find without knowing the family history. A house name can preserve an older use, but leave a visible trace that explains why the household still recognizes it.
Explore namesCastles
Choose a silhouette or duty before invoking an ancient dynasty.
Decide whether the name identifies a defensive site, a residence, or the settlement around it. Keep those scales separate, then let a tower, bridge, or ceremony explain the familiar local form.
Explore namesPalaces
Separate ceremonial names from the staff’s practical vocabulary.
Design a ceremonial name and the practical directions used by staff. A palace can accumulate formal titles while workers rely on a courtyard or entrance; connect the forms through an arrival or delivery.
Explore namesFortresses
Make location and defensive purpose legible without tactical instructions.
Name the site’s role at the time relevant to the story. If a fortress becomes an observatory, market, or archive, decide whether the old name survives and which users prefer the new designation.
Explore namesVillages
Build from a local livelihood or crossing people still remember.
Use one local livelihood and one spatial fact rather than piling up pleasant natural words. A former occupation can remain in the name after the work changes if the landscape or a custom preserves its trace.
Explore namesCities
Let districts have shorter everyday names than the city’s formal title.
Distinguish the city from its districts, streets, and individual buildings. Pick a naming force that can support future neighborhoods without making every label repeat the same first word or administrative title.
Explore namesCapitals
Ask whether the official name and common nickname tell different histories.
Separate the official seat of government from the wider city and its local nickname. Decide whose document supplies the name: an invitation, a resident’s directions, and an outside atlas may emphasize different things.
Explore namesHarbors
Test the name on a timetable and in a shouted arrival.
Choose a name that works in an arrival announcement and an ordinary work request. A harbor’s public form should differ from a ship name; a specific landing can use a short additional qualifier.
Explore namesTaverns
Picture the hanging sign before writing the backstory.
Picture a sign that could be recognized before its text is read. Give the public name a straightforward first reading, then use a local custom or repaired object to support a quieter second interpretation.
Explore namesInns
Give travelers a name they could remember after one recommendation.
Name the stop from a traveler’s point of view. Separate the inn from its owner and room names, and choose one remembered feature that can survive a recommendation after the visitor has left town.
Explore namesBakeries
Choose a sensory detail without making unsupported product claims.
Choose an image that fits a shop sign and a small wrapper. A daily routine, community connection, or signature object can explain the name without inventing dietary, sourcing, or quality certifications.
Explore namesWorkshops
Use a material or process that could become a believable trade sign.
Identify the work a visitor could commission and the sign used to find it. Keep the workshop’s trading identity distinct from a maker’s personal name, while a stamp or receipt can connect them.
Explore namesLibraries
Decide whether the name honors a collection or a way of reading.
Decide whether the name honors a collection, a building, or an access tradition. A reader needs a practical public form; an archival dedication can remain in the catalog or the first arrival scene.
Explore namesAcademies
Match the formality of the title to the fictional institution’s role.
Choose the subject and scale of the fictional institution before naming it. A workshop school and a court academy need different levels of formality; the full title should not imply expertise beyond the invented brief.
Explore namesTemples
Build a fictional practice before selecting sacred-sounding words.
Build a fictional practice that explains the building’s role and public name. A local entrance name may differ from a formal dedication; connect the two without treating the invented institution as a real religious authority.
Explore namesShrines
Anchor the name in a local act of remembrance.
Choose a small act that residents or visitors can perform in the fiction. The name should point toward a place, object, or remembered relationship rather than claiming a real spiritual benefit or guaranteed outcome.
Explore namesMonasteries
Keep invented institutions distinct from claims about real traditions.
Distinguish the community, its building, and the practice that gives it a public role. An invented institution can have believable daily work without suggesting an affiliation, historical lineage, or credential in a real religion.
Explore namesRuins
Consider what present-day visitors can actually see.
Name the place from what present visitors can observe, then decide whether scholars or residents use another form. The difference between a surviving feature and a recorded purpose can become a recoverable story clue.
Explore namesDungeons
Name a spatial puzzle rather than promising graphic danger.
Choose the space’s original job before naming its current mystery. Doors, inventory labels, or ventilation traces can make an underground area legible without relying on graphic danger as the only source of atmosphere.
Explore namesMazes
Choose one navigational rule the name can quietly suggest.
Name the maze’s organizing rule rather than a generic difficulty level. A repeated landmark or condition for opening an exit gives the title something the player can test through observation instead of arbitrary guessing.
Explore namesMines
Distinguish the geological feature from the working settlement.
Keep the extraction site distinct from the nearby settlement and the company that once used it. A seam, shift tradition, or recorded claim can anchor the name without pretending to provide geological or safety advice.
Explore namesCaves
Use an observable texture or sound as the naming anchor.
Choose a feature that a visitor can encounter early. An echo or rock texture can establish a practical name, while a second interpretation emerges later through the fictional scene rather than a long decorative title.
Explore namesForests
Decide who first used the name and what they needed to find.
Decide whether the name comes from residents, travelers, or an outside mapmaker. One visible tree, route, or boundary custom can make the label feel specific while leaving other people free to name the same landscape differently.
Explore namesMountains
Make neighboring peaks distinguishable on a crowded map.
Choose the observer whose viewpoint supplies the name and distinguish the summit from the ridge or pass. A short map form can coexist with a ceremonial dedication if the first scene makes their relationship clear.
Explore namesValleys
Name the valley at the scale used by its residents.
Name the valley at the scale of the people who use it. A shared trade or seasonal exchange can unite several settlements while their individual names remain distinct, preventing the regional label from replacing local identities.
Explore namesRivers
Check whether upstream and downstream communities use different names.
Decide whether communities share a river name or keep local forms for particular reaches. A change in label should be explained through a crossing, chart, or conversation before navigation depends on recognizing both names.
Explore namesLakes
Distinguish a seasonal appearance from a permanent geographic fact.
Choose whether the name records a permanent feature, a seasonal appearance, or a community event. Keep that distinction visible so the label suggests a setting without being mistaken for a real geographic fact or current condition.
Explore namesSeas
Choose a sailor’s reference point rather than a generic color alone.
Give the name a viewpoint and a scale. A coastal community, a shipping ledger, and an outside atlas can emphasize different waters; connect their terminology without pretending an invented chart establishes real oceanographic conditions.
Explore namesIslands
Try the name in both a shipping list and a local address.
Name the island from an approach or local use, then test it as part of an ordinary address. Distinguish the island from its main settlement and any lighthouse, especially when one clue mentions all three.
Explore namesDeserts
Avoid treating a dry landscape as empty of people or history.
Start with people, routes, and a practical reference rather than an assumption of emptiness. A well, postal custom, or remembered path can support the name while the landscape changes around the residents’ vocabulary.
Explore namesSwamps
Use vegetation and local travel habits instead of disgust as shorthand.
Choose the details that residents use to navigate and work in the wetland. A plant, boardwalk, or floating marker supplies more identity than a generalized unpleasant adjective and can support several distinct neighboring places.
Explore namesGlaciers
Give the ice feature a scale that matches the map.
Distinguish an icefield, a flowing feature, and a nearby settlement in the fictional map. A newly exposed object can explain a local nickname without making the generator a source of real climate or travel claims.
Explore namesVolcanoes
Keep the name geographic rather than a claim about present safety.
Separate the peak, crater, and community below it. Choose a material or custom that residents can point to, and leave activity or safety conditions to the story’s explicit facts rather than the name’s mood.
Explore namesKingdoms
Keep the territory’s name distinct from its ruling family.
Keep the territory’s name separate from the current ruling family. A shared resource or administrative custom can give the realm continuity when the ruler changes, while an official title may express an aspiration that residents contest.
Explore namesEmpires
Make official self-description different from every neighbor’s opinion.
Design an official self-description and an understandable external reference. Roads, calendars, and administrative habits can connect far places without making every resident or province share one attitude toward the imperial name.
Explore namesProvinces
Use one administrative naming rule consistently across a map.
Choose a naming rule that can be applied consistently across several neighboring districts. Record exceptions explicitly, and distinguish the administrative name from a town, landscape, or older local region that overlaps its borders.
Explore namesBorderlands
Name the people and exchanges that make a boundary inhabited.
Name the inhabited exchanges that make a boundary meaningful. A shared postbox, market, or maintenance duty gives the place an identity beyond its position relative to a distant center or a single political viewpoint.
Explore namesContinents
Explain whose language supplied a map-wide label.
Decide who produced the map and how its large-scale label became legible to the audience. Different coastlines or language communities can retain their own names; a short explanatory link keeps that plurality readable.
Explore namesPlanets
Separate a survey designation from a settled world’s own name.
Separate the stable survey identifier from the name residents actually use. A dedication, local nickname, and orbital reference can coexist if the interface distinguishes those fields and the arrival scene connects the personal and technical forms.
Explore namesMoons
Keep orbital order and poetic names easy to cross-reference.
Give a technical reference and a poetic name different jobs. The everyday form may come from a song or shared view, while orbital order belongs in a separate field that does not change whenever the nickname changes.
Explore namesStar systems
Use a consistent naming order for star, station, and orbit.
Set the order for system, star, planet, and station before choosing decorative words. A stable hierarchy allows a short name to remain distinctive without forcing the audience to remember an unintroduced chain of similar identifiers.
Explore namesGalaxies
Choose a distant visual metaphor without inventing scientific facts.
Choose a visual metaphor and identify whose observation established it in the fiction. A catalog reference can remain separate from the public name, preserving a readable identity without claiming actual astronomical discovery or measurement.
Explore namesSpace stations
Make the short radio form different from nearby docking codes.
Name the station’s function and its recognizable shared space separately. Keep the short radio form distinct from vessel names, berth codes, and emergency language; use the longer form only where the display has room.
Explore namesColonies
Show a settlement’s own identity instead of only its sponsor’s ambitions.
Distinguish a community’s self-chosen name from the designation used by its sponsor. A local landmark or public decision gives residents agency, while a record of the former label can preserve the history of that relationship.
Explore namesUnderwater cities
Choose a landmark that residents can perceive in their environment.
Choose landmarks residents could perceive and use in everyday directions. A city name, dome label, and current route should not all be the same phrase; the fictional environment should explain which distinctions matter.
Explore namesTreehouses
Connect the name to access, canopy, or a daily use.
Choose a purpose and an approach that make the dwelling recognizable. A public nickname can point to a basket, landing, or reading room while a private household name stays out of ordinary directions.
Explore namesFarms
Name a crop or landscape detail without claiming real certification.
Distinguish the farm’s place name from the household surname and any fictional product label. A crop or daily routine can explain the identity without implying a real certification, commercial operation, or verified agricultural claim.
Explore namesGardens
Pick one organizing idea visitors can notice on a walk.
Choose one organizing idea that a visitor can notice while walking. A garden’s full dedication can sit on a plaque, while ordinary directions use a shorter form connected to a visible path, bed, or terrace.
Explore namesBridges
Make the crossing’s nickname useful for giving directions.
Design the practical name first, then decide whether the two banks agree on it. A repair tradition or paired dedication can carry the disagreement without making the crossing hard to locate in a quest or timetable.
Explore namesRoads
Check the name on a short directional sign.
Name the route at the level used by residents, not only by an atlas. A former destination may survive in the wording, but the player needs one visible explanation before the old name becomes essential to navigation.
Explore namesMarkets
Name a trading rhythm or meeting place instead of a vague promise.
Choose a rhythm, material, or meeting place that can be observed in a scene. Distinguish the square, the regular event, and the institution managing it so a character can ask for directions without ambiguity.
Explore namesCemeteries
Use respectful language centered on remembrance.
Use a respectful place identity centered on remembrance and the people who maintain it. A garden, planting practice, or record can explain the name without making loss into a decorative mystery or sensational claim.
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