Last week, I wrote a post called Creating a Map for Your World: How to Get Started, which was the first half of two-week series on map-making for novelists. Today we are going deeper. We’re going to talk about what kinds of details you can add to your maps and how to come up with names for all of those things.

Make a List

Start by making a list of important places characters go in your story. This could be mountains, lakes, oceans, forests, cities, towns, buildings, or landmarks. All of these are things you can add to your map. Try not to list places your characters won’t go and aren’t talked about in your book. Such things will only clog up your map and make your reader wonder when the characters will go there. Below, I’ve listed some of these ideas and more to inspire you.

Geography

What does your world look like? Does your planet have multiple biomes like earth? Our planet has five: aquatic, desert, forest, grasslands, and tundra. What’s the landscape like? Do you need trees? How about mountains, deserts, forests, lakes, rivers, bays, oceans? Remember, water flows downhill toward larger bodies of water and eventually into the ocean. Also, the more food and water your land has available, the higher the population. Deserts don’t support as many people as jungles do.

If you’re creating a fictional town on earth, you can still think about the geography. Are there any hills, lakes, rivers, or forests in your town? What buildings do you want to show? These could be people’s homes or businesses or schools, etc.

How is the weather in your fantasy land? Does it affect your map? Are there habitable zones or places too dangerous to go? If so, perhaps those need to be marked.

In my map of the Five Realms (below), I created a desert land with no surface water. The vast number of subterranean rivers and the mining for magical evenroot created many canyons, which created the need for many long bridges. If you zoom in on my map, you can see the canyons and bridges. I also noted subterranean rivers with dots. All of these storyworld elements are pivotal to the plot of my story, so I wanted them on the map where readers could see and better understand them.

If you need help with geography, remember that I wrote three posts on the topic that should help you with the physical landscape. You can read those here:

Geography for Worldbuilding, Part One
Geography for World-Building, Part Two: Climate, Weather, and Biomes
Geography for World-Building, Part Three: Bodies of Water

Cities and Towns

Most people mark cities and towns on maps with dots, but you could depict them with symbols too. I did something similar with the map from the Magic Hunters series. Different castles represent major cities.

Ask yourself what other interesting attributes might go on a map around your cities or towns? City walls, perhaps. Think of Zion, the underground city from The Matrix; Lothlorian, the city in the trees from The Lord of the Rings; or Knowhere from Guardians of the Galaxy, which is the city inside the severed celestial head. Is there an interesting city in your world? Why not try and put at least one in your story?

Culture and Religion

Culture and religions are two great topics to inspire places on your map. There could be ancient ruins of some kind, churches, graveyards, temples, altars, statues, or cities in which people travel to for a pilgrimage. I did this with my map of the Five Realms from the Kinsman Chronicles. I listed in the key Magon’s Altars 1-5. These were religious altars that nomadic Magonians traveled between to worship. The readers travel to many of these altars in the story. Another thing I did to try and show culture on the map of the Five Realms was to add the flag of each nation. While my map is black and white, I know the colors each of these nations use, which helped me with my worldbuilding.

Methods of Travel

It’s important to know what level of technology exists in your world. If your story is contemporary on earth, then you’ll likely have regular roads on your map. If you’re writing a pre-steam engine society, people travel on roads or rivers. Old school roads should be windy, curving around mountains and rivers. In a historical story, it’s important to remember that water was one of the best methods of travel. During the Western Expansion of the United States, the Great Lakes provided a waterway to the Atlantic Ocean, and everyone knew how valuable that was. The Toledo War was fought between Ohio and Michigan over the port city of Toledo because both states wanted access to the great lake that would lead to Europe, via the other lakes, rivers, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean. So, don’t forget to take waterways into consideration when you create borders for different countries in your world. It’s also a very good idea to include a legend if your characters are traveling great distances. I usually just draw a one-inch line, then decide how many miles it represents.

Creatures

Are there any creatures that are so frightening that people won’t go near the land they live on? If such a thing is applicable to your story, you might note it on your map. Looking again to my map of the Five Realms, I had locations that were shaded in where dragon-like beasts live, and in the key I noted these as The Gray.

Boundaries

Do you have walls, gates, or borders in your world? Think about the Berlin Wall that once separated East and West Germany or the No Touching Zone between the USA and Canada. 

History

Tolkien wrote a very complex history of his world. A great mapped example from that history is Osgiliath, a city that was once the capital of Gondor and is now in ruins. Is there anything that’s a part of your world’s history that could be added to your map?

Magic

Is there magic in your story, and if so, does it affect your map? In King’s Folly, magic comes from a tuberous root that is dug up from beneath the ground. Cities tend to be located where that root grows plentiful. Another example comes rom my book By Darkness Hid where the Darkness is a magical curse.

Are there portals in your story? Magic schools or forests? Think through your magic to see if any aspect of it can be included on your map.

Landmarks and Buildings

There are lots of landmarks on the map inside the front of the book The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Think of Rabbit’s House, the 100 Acre Wood, Pooh’s Trap for Heffalumps, etc. In my Magic Hunters books, I used little pictures to show other things like the cats’ house, the elephant graveyard, the cabin in the woods, and the Forest of Lost Souls.

Are there important locations in your story? Think about castles, gates, abandoned cabins, altars, bridges, monuments, etc.

NAMING THINGS

A lot of fantasy writers get stressed out trying to name all the things in their world or on their map. I’ve listed many different ideas below to inspire you. Remember, if you’re stuck, just pick a name and go with it. You can always change it later.

Consider genre & tone
Knowing the genre and tone of your story will get you started on the right track with naming things. If you’re writing a realistic fantasy novel, you don’t want to choose satirical names for places like those used in the Princess Bride: the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fire Swamp, Zoo of Death, or the location of the R.O.U.S.’s.

Also consider the following two movies Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. Both have similar storyworlds, similar adventure, a similar cast, a similar villain, and similar stakes… but Star Wars has more of a dramatic tone, where Guardians of the Galaxy is comical. Make the tone and genre of your story comes through in how you name things.

Try something different
Strive to find a unique method of naming the places in your story. You could do this in many ways. A couple examples that come to mind is Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone and Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember. Bardugo used a Russian theme (which was new at the time) in Shadow and Bone for the culture of the people, the architecture, and for many of the character and place names, like Chernast, Ravka, and Balakirev. In City of Ember, DuPrau chose many names for her underground city that had to do with pipes or underground things, like: Rockbellow Rd., Stonegrit Ln., and Plummer Street. Click on these Google search results for “Shadow and Bone map” and “City of Ember map” to see what I mean.

Also think about the geography, religion, and cultures in your world. What do these people groups care about and why? How can the names you choose reflect that?

Foreign Languages
J. K. Rowling used Latin for many of the names and spells in the Harry Potter books. I used Hebrew in a similar way in my Blood of Kings books. Is there a foreign language that hasn’t been overused that might fit one of the cultures in your storyworld? I don’t necessarily recommend you use the actual words. You could simply choose the style and sound of a language and rearrange letters to make up your own words. Be sure to Google them to make sure you don’t choose words that have awkward meanings in your inspired language.

Fictional Languages
Creating your own language is always an option, but I warn you to be careful. You might spend much longer than necessary doing so. Languages like Elvish and Klingon took a very long time to write, and if you want to write a novel, you should invest the majority of your time writing that novel. But if creating your own language is something you really want to do, go for it! I’m far from an expert, but I did write a post on creating your own language a few years back. Click here to read it.

Atlas/Globe
Google Maps is a favorite of mine. If I get stuck and need interesting character or place names, I often open Google Maps, type in a foreign country, and zoom in, looking for interesting words. I’ve done this by themes, as well, to come up with many similar sounding names like Leigh Bardugo did in Shadow and Bone. You simply pick a country, find interesting names, and flip a letter or two around to create your own unique words. Again, just remember to Google possible meanings.

The maps of earth are also useful for speculative fiction genres like alternate history and dystopian. With these genres, use what’s already on the map and invent a few changes. Brandon Sanderson’s map from the Rithmatist is an amazing example of an alternate history map in which the USA is actually an archipelago called the United Isles with states called Georgiabama, New France, and Canadia.

My dystopian map of the Safe Lands was set in the real town of Crested Butte, Colorado, eighty years in the future. I traced the shape of my map over a map of the local ski resort. When I had need of street names in my story, I zoomed in on Google Maps and used the street names that are already there today, tweaking some and leaving some as is.


Themes

In Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Katnis, Primrose, and Rue are all types of flowers and plants. In my Blood of Kings trilogy, I didn’t want to use Hebrew words for all my character names because I wanted to try and give the feel of different cultures. So I came up with themes for each city. For Carmine, since it is a vineyard manor, I created a list of names having to do with wine: Basalt, Clay, Peat, Flint, Gypsum, Keuper, Loam, Terra, Pinot, Malbec, Verdot, etc. In Allowntown, an orchard manor, I listed types of apples to use for names: Cider, Crab, Gala, Baldwin, Pippin, Ambrosia, Cortland, Cameo, Ginger, Jonamac, Braeburn, Macoun, Taylor, etc. Some other themes I used for names of people from different villages were: Inupiat, Kenyan, Gaelic, names of stars, and things having to do with the sea.

Call It What It Is

Did you know that a shire is a non-metropolitan county in England? Put on your Jane Austen hat and see if any of these sound familiar: Yorkshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Shropshire . . . These are all shire counties in England. Tolkien simply called it what it was. Parts of your map could be named by trade: think of New York City’s Garment District or Financial District. You could also name things by ethnicity like in Chinatown or Little Italy. Geographical references like Upper East Side, Midtown, West Village are also clever ways to name things. Or what about landmarks like World Trade Center or Battery Park?

Acronyms
Chester Rapkin was known as the Father of SoHo in Manhattan. He was an urban planner who first used the term SoHo in 1962 to coin the area South of Houston street. This started a trend for nicknaming places in Manhattan by acronyms: NoHo (North of Houston Street), TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street). You can read my full post on this subject called Nicknames for Places. I used Mr. Rapkin’s idea when I came up with the location of Cibelo in my Safe Lands books, which is (SPOILER ALERT!) the CIty BElow the LOwlands.

History

Many of US cities were named in French and later Americanized. For example: Detroit (French for strait), Little Rock (la petite roche), Green Bay (baie verte), Boise (French for wooded). And that’s only French. The United States is extremely diverse in the cultures that made up the places on our map. Your storyworld should be diverse as well. Think though the history of your world. Where did the people who named things come from? What language did they speak? And what were their names? So many places in our country are named after famous people. Think of Pennsylvania (named after William Penn) or Louisville (named after King Louis 16th of France). And what about Lincoln, Nebraska? It doesn’t just work with cities, either. Think about the Lincoln Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge, FDR Drive, and the JFK Airport.

Simple is often best

When creating a map for a story, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. Ask yourself: Are these names memorable? Can readers pronounce them? And do they fit my storyworld? The answer to all three should be yes, nine times out of ten. Really try to make things easy on your readers. Think of the following list of names that are memorable, pronounceable, and and fit the storyworld, and you’ll see what I mean.

PLACES

Death Star, Enterprise, Fablehaven, Firefly, Hogwarts,

Middle Earth, Narnia, Neverland, Newcago, Panem.

CHARACTERS

Agent Smith, Albus Dumbeldore, Aslan, Bilbo Baggins, 

C-3PO, Captain James T. Kirk, Chewbacca, Data, The Doctor, Gandalf, 

Han Solo, Harry Potter, Kelsier, Merlin, Morpheus, 

Neo, Mr. Anderson, Q, R2-D2, Randall Flagg, Spock, 

Starbuck, Terminator, Vin, and Yoda.

As always when working on anything related to worldbuilding, don’t forget to write the book! Map-making can easily suck you into storyworld builder’s disease where you can get lost for a very long time. Keep things in perspective and make sure you’re getting your word counts written along with designing your map.

What are some of your favorite place or character names from books or movies? Share in the comments. And if you have a neat trick for choosing names, share that too!

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms, and the author of several young adult fantasy novels including the Blood of Kings trilogy. She loves teaching about writing. She blogs at goteenwriters.com and also posts writing videos on her YouTube channel and on Instagram. Jill is a Whovian, a Photoshop addict, and a recovering fashion design assistant. She grew up in Alaska without running water or electricity and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Find Jill online at jillwilliamson.com or on InstagramYouTubeFacebookPinterest, and Twitter.