The Art Worldbuilding: Names

 That's not my name

Welcome to Odarath, North of Ettinmere and just outside of Allestar, all locations within the larger region of Dalentarth. What I just read out to you wasn't a random selection of gibberish, but the actual name of early game locations in the cult role playing game Kingdoms of Amalur. It was whilst playing that very game, and trying to get to grips with why it never hit it off the ground within the role playing community, that I first came up with this topic. (Albeit, a decent while before I ever even tackled topics with a blog to begin with.) Because, you see, the gameplay was very decent in Amalur, the encounters decently cinematic,  the storyline... well it existed. All in all I found the game to just be a more evolved version of Fable, without all of the toothless 'interact with the citizens' garbage which has never once lived up to the promise that those games seem to think it does. And those Fable games were a massive hit so why not Amalur? Well, I'm sure there's a plethora of reasons flying this way and that, with luck being the most prevailing factor (or lack thereof in this game's case) but for me it came down to those names and the concept of immersion.

Immersion is a tricky concept to juggle when it comes to telling a story, through any medium, as it almost becomes this intangible value that everyone can identify once achieved but no one can point it out from a lineup. I suppose the best analogy would be in equating immersion with the storyteller's ability to trick the audience into believing the world, but that makes for a clumsy metaphor when in many ways becoming 'immersed' is like an agreement to give oneself over to the fiction, rather than an unwitting dupe. Thus I can't say I know all the ingredients to the pie, but I do know that it's an important dish to the feast of storytelling and one which I think becomes ever more essential the more fantastical the story in question becomes. When we're talking high fantasy, it's do or die; you either persist long enough to believe and care for this fictional world or come out the otherside unconvinced and utterly uninterested in everything that happens therein. And I think the first step to achieving this all-important immersion is in names.

What is in a name? When you think about it, what we choose to name things, specifically locations, is both incredibly arbitrary and hugely important. Think of the planet on which we exist, Earth, a literal descriptor of the substance which covers the ground, and a whole-sale term for the home of all humanity. It's such a simple name, but a strong and evocative one that has a literally intangible, yet effortlessly imaginable, etymology written upon it's face. When it comes to storytelling I find myself coming back a lot to the name 'Earth', and what it means, it's significance, and have eventually come to the conclusion that it's probably the best name for our planet we can hope to think of. If incessantly narcissistic, but such narcissism drove astrological studies long before we mapped the solar system, so I find it fitting. Simple perfection like that is most likely impossible to replicate in fiction, as fiction requires the active creation of a world and such names are designed to be so obvious they almost defy critical thought, and yet I think the best fictional names at least lean towards that perfection.

Coming back to Amalur for a bit, can you remember any of those names that I listed at the top without scrolling up to look at them? I played the game and I couldn't remember a single one, I had to look it up and then follow up several wiki pages just to remember which place was which. (I don't have Amalur installed and I can't be bothered.) It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that's so forgettable about them, they aren't too unpronounceable, they sound real enough, they even have a naming convention to them (With your 'mere' and your 'arth' borrowing from real geography) and yet they totally lack staying power. But if you ask me to name the first town in Skyrim; Riverwood. What about Morrowind? Sedya Neen. (That's something you wouldn't pull up so quickly unless you were a Morrowind die hard) You can see the difference, can't you? But let me try to define it.

A lot of names are actually very mechanical when we go to their roots, deriving meaning from literally describing either what can be found in a location or who can be found there. From there names can evolve and take on new forms that might have entirely new meanings to them or might even morph into something else entirely that sounds like a name. One of my favourite examples of a city from the real world like this is Istanbul. One of the earliest names of that place being Byzantium, seat of the Byzantine empire, through the many years and many changes of rule that title would shift wildly. At one point it was known as Constantinople, in honour of it's patron. At another point in history it was called Islambol, in reverence of the prevailing religion which was so important to it's ethos. Taking that principle to fictional locations, you can see how well it serves in some of the most iconic fantasy names we take for granted. Riverwood sits along a prominent river through the land of Skyrim, King's Landing is the sea-adjacent seat of the king of Westeros, Baldur's Gate is a city with a big gate that was probably founded by some dude named Baldur. (It's actually a little more complicated then that, but you don't need to know that to remember the name.) These are functional names and that makes them comprehensive and easily understandable, allowing your psyche to make note of them, remember them, and then make them believable.

That doesn't mean, of course, that there's no place for exotic names in our Fantasy games. (For what a demandable state of affairs would we be in were that the case?) Just look at the Dwarves from The Elder Scrolls and their naming convention. (Mzinchaleft springs to mind here.) Just try saying that in your head, it's sounds like you're going through a mild seizure. (In fact, the team over at Zenimax have a guy on the lore team who specialises in just pronouncing these things) By all accounts these names are convoluted, abrasive to the tongue, meaningless and should be impossible to remember, and a lot of them absolutely are. The Elder Scrolls manages to make some of these names so ridiculous and adverse to what our brains normally expect to see that we remember the spectacle of the name if not the name itself; but at that point we're almost looking at a parody of a name. It's a name that fits a society like the Elder Scrolls Dwarves, specifically designed to be a mystery that's never resolved, because the moment you make them tangible and have to come to grips with a people who willingly named their grand cities as though they were picking through a bowl alphabetti spaghetti, the fiction starts to unnravel.

I think it's really hard to make a fantasy world that is dependant on these non-conventional names and which people can still latch onto easily, because the very premise of fantasy is already asking a large leap of faith for the audience to begin with. Even as a fan of fantasy, when you present to me a world similar to the one that  Kingdoms of Amalur did, with nothing but names just that hair's breadth outside of convention, I  end up being disengaged. It's a bizarre and lamentable little quirk of immersion, but I justify it by thinking 'why should I take the time to believe in this place that doesn't exist?'. Giving me that reason to care is the entire point of telling a story, and the veil of fiction can be a tough one to pierce if you don't approach it correctly. Of course, it's possible to put so much effort into creating a new culture and way of forming names that even exotic names become believable, but that takes such dedication to world building that it almost becomes unworth the time. I call Lord of the Rings and it's names that range from very strong simple names (Mordor) to whimsical and flighty ones, (Minas Tirith) but through the strength of the world built manages to convince all the same. (Although the books can be pretty dense to pierce through on first read.)

Worldbuilding is an incredible manifestation of effort in storytelling and a tremendous exercise of indulgence and restraint, as, I suppose, are most forms of art. To think that something as simple as a name could serve as that little extra bit of adhesive keeping the edifice standing seems silly, and yet how many times have you looked at some 6 syllable fantasy gibberish word and thought "I'm not awake enough for this crap"? Creating the most approachable and engrossing worldspace is all about meeting the audience halfway, and the best foot forward is in that very first name that they see. So what is the equation? Mechanical names with an instantly identifiable etymology work best, but if want to get a bit more fancy it's helpful to do so in moderation and to always create with that ever present perspective of "If I come to this concept or place as a complete stranger, do I find this engaging and interesting or do I feel turned away at the door?"