Ask Localization Megathread

[Olor]

This is my favourite thread. Thanks so much for everything Unelonborro.

You talked about making place names more grokkable... but where do they come from? Do you just put some syllables together that sound good? As far as I can tell Morimar isn't a word for example. How do you come up with those names? I think they sound very authentic - like real names of real places.

I am a gamemaster for a tabletop RPG, in a homebrew world and I find coming up with good place names is hard. What's your process?

[Unelonborro]

This is my favourite thread. Thanks so much for everything Unelonborro.

You talked about making place names more grokkable... but where do they come from? Do you just put some syllables together that sound good? As far as I can tell Morimar isn't a word for example. How do you come up with those names? I think they sound very authentic - like real names of real places.

I am a gamemaster for a tabletop RPG, in a homebrew world and I find coming up with good place names is hard. What's your process?

It really depends a lot on the context. We have a list of stock NPC names that we draw from whenever we have characters who are relatively unimportant in terms of lore--for example, Affi and Dremi in the Escha areas were drawn from our pool. Every so often we run out and have to think of some more.

Most Elvaan, you have noticed, have French-sounding names. These names were always thought up by the French team, so when the FR and DE versions were canceled I had the FR team come up with 200 male and female Elvaan names before they got reassigned to different projects.

Obviously, other names need to have specific directions based on how they are being used. For example, over in Vagary one of the bosses is Perfidien. We wanted to make a name that sounds like "Melvien" but is more sinister, so I asked a former XI French translator who now works on XIV to come up with an evil-sounding French name, and that's what we ended up going with.

Balamor is another recent example. When we were coming up with names for important figures in Adoulin, we were given concept art, background stories, roles that they would play, and dev names. Balamor's dev name was "Death Jester," and he looks a bit like a clown, so we decided to come up with something cool-sounding that went along those lines. "Balatro" is a Roman word for someone who is a professional buffoon or jester, and those of higher economic classes often hired them to perform at their feasts and banquets. "Mors" is, of course, the latin word/root for "death." Combine those two and you end up with Balamor!

Sometimes we just want something that has a certain "ring" to it. For example, we have the Celennia Memorial Library over in Adoulin. Celennia, whose full name is Celennia Wexworth, was actually originally intended to have a bit more of a role in the Seekers of Adoulin story, but we ended up not finding the proper timing to fit her in. The event team wanted someone who sounded pure and heavenly, so we took our cue from the word "celestial" and massaged it into a very feminine sounding name. As an aside, the reason we ended up at "Celennia Memorial Library" instead of "Wexworth Memorial Library" is because Celennia is easier to pronounce in JP.