About the game toponyms

[Tiami]

Hello (and sorry for my english), I have some questions for the localization team.

I'm studying how toponyms in FFXIV participate in the construction of the lore for a symposium in a french university (about video games language and culture).

My questions are : when the localization team choose a place-name, the lore of this place (as we can read it in the sightseeing log or the encyclopedia) is established while you're naming the place, or after ? In english, it seems you're privileging the expressivity of the names of localities (which we don't retrieve sometimes in french, for example), there is a work in the team to research the best "poetry" of a name ?

I'm sorry if my questions seem evident, but I wanted to be sure about my remarks in my work.

Thank you !

[Rongway]

I'm mostly certain that Michael-Christopher Koji Fox has answered this question before at a FanFest or other interview, but I'd have to dig around to find it. Someone else will probably beat me to it, but I'll link it if I find a citable reference.

Just off the top of my head, I recall something about how many names are chosen in English first and then localized to JP FR DE, rather than chosen in JP and then localized to EN FR DE, so the names often are chosen to evoke specific imagery in English, yes.

But also keep in mind that sometimes MCKF will pick a name specifically because "it can be used as a cool in-universe profanity", like splitting Nald'thal into the twins Nald and Thal so that characters could exclaim, "Thal's balls!" or deciding that they needed to add an extra non-elemental Heaven and Hell to the six elemental ones because swearing, "Seven Hells!" sounds cooler than "Six Hells!", which I suppose is still a sort of imagery or poetry of the name or lore...

[Tiami]

Thank you for your answer !

I read some interviews of MCKJ, and your memories are right, the English version is the first for many things in the game.
As I'm not English, I don't recognize easily the poetry of some names, but you confirm my thoughts about it.