Game Lore - Naming
This note is about naming things, such as races or cities, in games, especially in fantasy games.
If the name is made-up word, everyone will have different connotations and probably immediately dislike it in some way. Within 3 and 6 months, people will forget that they ever had an objection.
Dragon Age "Qunari" was initially despised. Some people thought it
sounded too much like canary. Some people thought "the Qun" was
difficult to pronounce, and sounded too much like a bad word.
6 months later, suddenly nobody wanted to change it.
If you don't like the name, but can't suggest something better or can't tell why the name does not fit, you should not start rebelling against the name.
If we can't agree about the name, go with this as a temporary name and talk about it in a few months. If a name is honestly, truly temporary then make it terrible. As in nobody would ever be willing to risk leaving it that way.
The Dragon Age world was not initially called “Thedas”.
There was a name that existed, but I didn’t like it and refused to
use it in the documentation or in conversation.
We called it "the Dragon Age setting".
Someone had begun using the acronym “TheDAS” (The Dragon Age Setting)
on the forums. People started using that and it stuck.
It's usually better to use English names and not try to name everything in a fantasy language. Then you can use elvish or dwarvish names to emphasize certain placer, races or situations.
List of cool fantasy names:
Wintermarch
Drakonis
Cloudreach
Bloomingtide
Justinian
Solace
August
Kingsway
Harvestmere
Firstfall
Haring