How do you name your fictional towns?

[cteno4]

The ironic, absurd, and humorous are usually the best starting place.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Ewan.in.gz]

My layout will be based on the area around 赤羽 (Akabane), which is between Ueno and Omiya, so the main station (where the Saikyo Line interchanges with the Tohoku Mainline and all the routes it hosts) will be 赤森: Akamori, meaning Red Forest. To give the area a feeling of its' ancient natural qualities. Even though the layout will be set in the middle of modern-day Tokyo! 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Ewan.in.gz

[miyakoji]

On 4/10/2021 at 9:03 AM, 02ian said:

My plan is to use rough translations of station names from my local routes, where stations have names that are proper nouns i subsitute them for something that means some thing similar, or break the word down into smaller parts, then feed the componets into a certain search engine based web translator, and reconbine them

 

for example

Barnes Bridge - becomes 'Barn Bridge' So - 'Naya no hashi'

Strawberry Hill - 'Ichigonooka'

Clapham becomes - 'Clap' 'Pork' - 'Hakushu Butaniku'

Windsor & Eton Riverside - becomes 'Wind Saw Riverside' - Kaze ga Kawa-zoi o mita

Waterloo - becomes 'Water Toilet' - Suisentoire

Winchester - 'Win' 'Chest' - Mune ni katsu

Ryde Pier head - 'to ride' 'pier' 'head' Noru Kyokyaku Atama

 

i was actually surpised how good some of these translations sound as station names (at least to me), (of course to someone who actually speaks Japanese (which I don't) they probably sound like gibberish)

 

This is interesting and I believe has a sort of historical precedent.  One Chinese and one Japanese example:

• Oxford, at least the university and the dictionary, becomes 牛津 in Chinese.  牛 being an ox (I would understand it as cow in Japanese) and 津 where you ford a river.  Based on Wikipedia, this is actually the source of the name.  Rather than approximating the sound, they translated the actual meaning.
• An old Japanese name for Cambridge was Kenbashi 剣橋 - 剣 is a sword, in this case just used for its sound, and 橋 hashi/bashi is bridge.

I have sometimes thought about local place names using your method.  Chestnut Hill, Kurigaoka; Spring Garden, Izumizono or Sen'en maybe.  It is also interesting to consider the concrete meanings of names which are not English, we have Welsh, Dutch, and German placenames around here, and then express those in kanji.

[Ewan.in.gz]

10 hours ago, miyakoji said:

 

This is interesting and I believe has a sort of historical precedent.  One Chinese and one Japanese example:

• Oxford, at least the university and the dictionary, becomes 牛津 in Chinese.  牛 being an ox (I would understand it as cow in Japanese) and 津 where you ford a river.  Based on Wikipedia, this is actually the source of the name.  Rather than approximating the sound, they translated the actual meaning.
• An old Japanese name for Cambridge was Kenbashi 剣橋 - 剣 is a sword, in this case just used for its sound, and 橋 hashi/bashi is bridge.

I have sometimes thought about local place names using your method.  Chestnut Hill, Kurigaoka; Spring Garden, Izumizono or Sen'en maybe.  It is also interesting to consider the concrete meanings of names which are not English, we have Welsh, Dutch, and German placenames around here, and then express those in kanji.

 

As a Chinese speaker, it is quite common to find place names in Western countries being translated this way, especially for smaller cities, rather than being rendered phonetically. But Asian place names, especially in countries that use Chinese characters (Kanji in Japan, for example) will be written in the equivalent Chinese characters, though usually still pronounced in Chinese.

 

Thus Japan 日本 Nihon becomes Ri ben 日本, Tokyo 東京 becomes Dong Jing 东京 and so on.

 

Japanese pronunciations for Chinese place names tend to be closer to the Chinese, since in Japanese there are several ways to pronounce most Kanji, including several "Chinese" pronunciations.

 

Though it is confusing that the Chugoku Region 中国 of Japan is written with EXACTLY the same characters as the common name of China 中国 Zhong Guo.... And traveling in Japan with a Chinese friend who doesn't speak Japanese (or English....) can be a bit of a challenge when I'm trying to explain where we are or where we are going....

 

😂

 

[bill937ca]

This is a piece of paper I have with translations of geographic and directional terms.  These seem to be  used as suffixes or prefixes. 

Edited April 22, 2021 by bill937ca

[miyakoji]

11 hours ago, Ewan.in.gz said:

 

Though it is confusing that the Chugoku Region 中国 of Japan is written with EXACTLY the same characters as the common name of China 中国 Zhong Guo.

I lived in Okayama, in the Chugoku region.  There is a bank there called Chugoku Ginko.  For quite a while, Google Map labeled these locations “China Bank” which I guess was a result of machine translation.   Looks like it’s fixed now.

[kami_illy]

I'm thinking about how to name the station of my Shorty-layout.

Since it is in the centre between the old town and the downtown parts I wouldn't want to call it either "old town station" or "new town station".

"Central station" 中央駅/Chūō-eki could be, but seems maybe a bit too generic. 

Another thought was to use my user name. Something like "Kami-town station" 加美町駅/ Kami-chō eki (Kami towns actually exist in a few places). Not sure though if the word and meaning of kami is bit strong for something like that... 

Any thoughts?

[railsquid]

"加美" is perfectly innocuous.

[Socimi]

5 hours ago, kami_illy said:

I'm thinking about how to name the station of my Shorty-layout.

Since it is in the centre between the old town and the downtown parts I wouldn't want to call it either "old town station" or "new town station".

"Central station" 中央駅/Chūō-eki could be, but seems maybe a bit too generic. 

Another thought was to use my user name. Something like "Kami-town station" 加美町駅/ Kami-chō eki (Kami towns actually exist in a few places). Not sure though if the word and meaning of kami is bit strong for something like that... 

Any thoughts?

 

Kami can also mean "upper", so Kamimachi can translate as "Upper town". There's also a counterpart: "Shimomachi" ("lower town").

[TokyoImperialPalace]

On 4/12/2021 at 8:04 PM, Ewan.in.gz said:

 

Though it is confusing that the Chugoku Region 中国 of Japan is written with EXACTLY the same characters as the common name of China 中国 Zhong Guo.... And traveling in Japan with a Chinese friend who doesn't speak Japanese (or English....) can be a bit of a challenge when I'm trying to explain where we are or where we are going....

 

😂

 

 

The Japanese area was defined first in Japan at least. It refers to the area being "middle distance country" from Kansai. Hence why Kintetsu is called "近鉄”　＝　近国＋電鉄.

[Aleks]

On 9/24/2021 at 7:38 AM, TokyoImperialPalace said:

 

The Japanese area was defined first in Japan at least. It refers to the area being "middle distance country" from Kansai. Hence why Kintetsu is called "近鉄”　＝　近国＋電鉄.

 

Sorry for adding to an old topic... I was always confused why Kansai is also known as Kinki 近畿, but it makes sense now. 近畿　Kinki means literally "close suburbs" or "near suburbs", and I guess everything was historically from the Kyoto perspective.

 

Funny that even in Japanese 中国 means both Chugoku region and China as a country though the nuances of the meaning are different, middle distance from Kyoto, vs. the Middle Kingdom i.e. the country in the middle.

[katoftw]

Isn't Kinki region just one part of Kansai? Not the whole?

 

Edit/ nevermind, google gave me the answer.

Edited January 15, 2023 by katoftw

[Aleks]

On the names I get inspiration from looking at actual locality and station names in Japan, and trying to understand what the names mean, and how this name came to be this way. Some names are pretty interesting.

 

Shinjuku - New inn (or lodging station, on an old highway)

Yoyogi - Hereditary tree (thought to be a reference to a large fir tree of old)

Takadanobaba - High field (hill?) for horseback riding

Uguisudani - Valley of nightingales (well, actually Japanese bush warblers... but nightingales are similar and a better sounding name in English). Yamanote line color is actually called "uguisu" which is the color of this bird

Akihabara - Plain of fall leaves

Yotsuya - Four valleys

Hachioji - Eight princes - I wonder why, for a place way out...

 

Of course everyone knows Tokyo is Eastern Capital (and Beijing is Northern Capital), Kyoto is Capital City, Osaka is a Big Hill (where?), Tokaido is Eastern Sea Route (and Hokkaido is Northern Sea Route), etc. A lot of times these names are fairly plan - Wide Island for Hiroshima, but sometimes you can get really colorful ones...

 

Anyway, the names I have been coming up with for my stations and tram stops so far are these:

 

So(u)renten (or So(u)renden) - Hall of Blue Lotus - 蒼蓮殿

Ogonki - Golden Age 黄金期 - and is virtually indistinguishable from the Russian word which means "little lights"

Kuronaemon - Gate of Black Seeds - 黒苗門 - seeds (rice) historically and now being super important to the Japanese (need to eat something!)

Hokuto - Northern Forest - this is an actual town in Yamanashi Prefecture 北杜- but Hokuto can also be spelled 北斗, short for 北斗星, hokutosei, which means Big Dipper, and this is of course the name of sleeper train to Hokkaido that ran until 2015 (which still sells and I am wondering if I should buy).

Ryuseiu - Meteor shower - 流星雨 - this is a station out of town on a hill people travel to watch the night sky...

Sunadokeiro - Tower of hourglass - 砂時計楼 - reference to a song Sunadokei (Hourglass) by L'Arc~en~ciel, hourglass being a reminder of personal responsibility in the passing world

Reikanshi - Spirit watch - 霊看視 - perhaps a place where guards used to stand to protect village against evil spirits coming from the forests - with Japan having many tales of evil spirits

Toorikazemachi - 通り風町 - City (or District) of gusts of wind (or you could read as City of people who pass by)

Toshin - 都心 - City Center - but is also a reference to a form of my son's name