City Name Inspirations

[ShadowPresident]

I know that hardcore players like ourselves don't bother with the "default" city names the game gives you when you build a new city. Just wondering what my fellow players draw on for city names.
I have used customer names (most of them are dept. stores whose names translate well into city names like McRaes, Carson, Bonton, etc.), cities I have lived in (from Barsinghausen, Germany to Charlotte, NC, USA), Nevada cities (Sparks, Reno, Las Vegas, Battle Mountain) and Vegas hotels (Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Mirage and Luxor unless the Egyptians already built Luxor). I also use names of people I know and city-ize them (my capital is ALWAYS Stephanopolis after ME)

[Rhothaerill]

I don't usually rename any cities when playing SP game. I only rename in PBEMs and democracy games. In PBEMs I will name cities with names I created in my D&D gaming days. In my Balderdash PBEM though I'm planning on naming cities to insult the other players (it's a special theme PBEM )

[Alex]

usually i don't rename cities. but i'd do it if i did PBEM.

[Kuciwalker]

I never bother to rename cities.

[Chaos_BF1942]

I sometimes rename cities.

I do remember in Civ 2 using a Spy to investigate an enemy city, and it can let you rename the city.

[joncha]

I will sometimes, usually its renaming captured cities to better reflect my empire... latinizing city names if I'm playing as the Romans, etc. Other than that, I tend to just keep the original names. Although, I have named "canal" cities Panama City before, and once I added "Impia" to the name of one of my Roman cities that culture-flipped and then subsequently "liberated."

jon.

[molly bloom]

I use any and all inspirations- abandoned historical sites, names of heroes, scientists, artists, battlegrounds.

[Flip McWho]

I stick with the default city names. Can't be bothered to change them. Besides I would run out of names to fast, there is only so many derivatives of Flip in the world

[Mountain Sage]

For each game, the capital's name is changed into one of my daughters'. The second city gets my second daughter's name. The next game, the two names are reversed.
This avoids comments like 'My city is bigger than yours", 'I have more wonders than you' or 'If she gets an aqueduct, I also want one asap'.

I tried once to give my wife's name to a newly conquered city, but then I heard one of my daughters tel my wife "You know, papa does not love you anymore. First he conquered you, then he got fed up and disbanded you'.
I'm still paying for it

[[Shane Hodgson]]

Because I know a lot about language, I can make up pretty accurate names. I only do this when the default names run out...when it starts making New Baghdad, Baghdad 2, and such. For example: with the Mayans, I came up with Xtepelontopec and Xtopotelequetzl. If I capture a city, like the Arabic Mecca, I transform it to fit with my Civ, to something like Mechtalochitlan.

[steven8r]

I will sometimes use the default city names, but mostly I give the city whatever name currently comes to mind. Generally the Capital is the ever original, 'Capital', or 'Capital City'. I've also named resource grabbing cities things like, 'Snake the Silks' or 'Rubber Robber' or something to that effect.

I once captured a city and it later flipped back to the original owner, so I took it again, razed it and brought in a Settler and founded a city on the same site named, 'Ashes of [previouscityname]'

Generally my names are inspired by geographic/resource features like 'Hillville' or 'Iron Mountain', 'Tundra Town', etc.

I find that naming my own cities helps me remember where they are on the map. Once I get past a certain number of cities, I soon get confused w/ the default names.

Steven

[Alex]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
I tried once to give my wife's name to a newly conquered city, but then I heard one of my daughters tel my wife "You know, papa does not love you anymore. First he conquered you, then he got fed up and disbanded you'.
I'm still paying for it

[bongo]

Never rename anything in SP. PBEM and demogames OTOH....

In PTWDG2 we have long given up the use of city names in our private forum, we only refer to them by numbers...makes sense as we rename them every second turn.

In a current PBEM I named one city 'St Owen By the River' to thank OPD for taking care of my game while I were honeymooning. We also renamed ALL cities in the 'F11' screen when one of the players had a birthday. I think he liked that

[Sarxis]

Same here. SP, I just couldn't be bothered with the time it takes to change one. But in MP, sometimes I will.

[eris]

I have used various themes and techniques. The most braindead was "aaa", "bbb", "ccc". etc. The idea was to be able to easily identify what order I had built the cities. Playing with one of the young ones in the household and trying to capture young attention, I mixed in their name into city names, adding suffixes like "burg", "opolis", "ville" etc. That got challenging. Ended up using geography names as well at the young one's suggestion. "Eastport", "Northport", "Ironmount", etc.

The one I enjoyed best was based on negatives. The capital was "nowhere", then "not here", "not there", moving to things like "nope", "nada", "nyet" and ending up with things like "somewhere else", "over there", and other such constructions. The kiddo thought I was crazy. I had also renamed myself and my tribe so that I was "nobody" of the tribe "nothing". What was really enjoyable was the various text messages in dialogue boxes. "The pyramids were built in somewhere else." "The people in nowhere are happy" "Greetings, nobody of the nothing!" and on and on."

Then again, I am notoriously easily amused.

[ShadowPresident]

My apologies for the dbl thread. The post got hung up on "waiting for Apolyton.net..." or something like that, so I stopped and reloaded and that musta dbl posted it. Sorry :-(

[Paddy]

When playing Huge games, I like to name each provincial capital Castle...., then have the cities in that area have a reference to that Castle name.

Then as the Empire grows, through settling in far flung places, or just taking control of great locations, I like to put the word OutPost in the title.

With these two processes I can easily track a city down when I get quick reports that something happened there...



Oh, and in PBEM games I like to disturb the minds of the other players

even if the only disturbed mind in the game is mine

[Iron Jackson]

Originally posted by Paddy the Scot

Oh, and in PBEM games I like to disturb the minds of the other players

even if the only disturbed mind in the game is mine

Good to know that.

Well, usually I stick with the default names (playing a lot Sumeria at the moment). The one civ I change the city names are the Germans, because due to the fact that I'm living here makes it easy to find more than the default names.

[Paddy]

Is that Right Herr Jackson...?

I would lke to introduce the Governor of my estates

[Akenaten]

Originally posted by eris

The one I enjoyed best was based on negatives. The capital was "nowhere", then "not here", "not there", moving to things like "nope", "nada", "nyet" and ending up with things like "somewhere else", "over there", and other such constructions. The kiddo thought I was crazy. I had also renamed myself and my tribe so that I was "nobody" of the tribe "nothing". What was really enjoyable was the various text messages in dialogue boxes. "The pyramids were built in somewhere else." "The people in nowhere are happy" "Greetings, nobody of the nothing!" and on and on."

Then again, I am notoriously easily amused.

Sort of related: has anyone else founded enough Ottoman cities to get down the list to where the game suggests "Not Constantinople"? Makes a good counterpoint to the capital, "Istanbul."

[joncha]

hehe... haven't found that one yet!

[Mace]

Originally posted by Akenaten
Sort of related: has anyone else founded enough Ottoman cities to get down the list to where the game suggests "Not Constantinople"? Makes a good counterpoint to the capital, "Istanbul."

Actually I believe that may be a reference to the song,
"Istanbul, Not Constantinople" by the band They Might Be Giants...

[Kuciwalker]

It is.

The Aztecs have a city called Mingapulco, too, and the Scandinavians IIRC have one called Thunderfall (a CFC mod).

[joncha]

Originally posted by Mace


Actually I believe that may be a reference to the song,
"Istanbul, Not Constantinople" by the band They Might Be Giants...

The They Might Be Giants version is a cover... the song is much older than that (hence the '50s feel to it). Good cover though.

jon.

[Johann Moritz]

Originally posted by bongo
We also renamed ALL cities in the 'F11' screen when one of the players had a birthday. I think he liked that

Sure I did.

Hey, who hasn't ever named his cities like Star Wars planets?

I once named them like historical PC games series. The capital was Civilization, of course.

[Jethro83]

Typically, I won't bother deviating on the default city list. But once it gets to "New..." whatever, I'll look up the country best representing the civ I'm playing, and use names of cities not in the list. Then I'll use the names of historical figures of that people.

If I conquer enemy cities, I may decide to keep their existing names, or change the name into a similar-sounding name that sounds more like the language of my own civ (especially if I'm using the Japanese).

If I relocate my capital, or set up my Forbidden Palace in the city, I'll usually rename the city to something far more appealing to reflect its new status (if it its name isn't appealing enough already).

Occasionally I might grab names of cities from other games or the names of certain characters from other games I find myself to like enough, or if the city is a conquered backwater of a hated enemy, I might use the name of a character I hate instead.

[Paddy]

I once got all narky with a opposition country that kept on going to war with me. So when we rolled into his country, the cities that were not smashed to shreds, all became "Concentration Camps"

[Smellincoffee]

Usually I name my cities-- if I give them custom names-- after the land they're on. A city near a plains cow was called "Kansas City". One near a horse was "Mustang". A city on a one-tiled island was 'Havana". Cities in tundra were named "Fort (wintery name hre)"
Usually, I go for the names of fictional cities in books and those I've made in SC3K/SC3KU.

[:) Smiley]

If you are playing the Greeks, you will notice that the last of the default city names is none other than Apolyton.

[Mr. President]

Most of the good names are already used.

I like non-real names that are descriptive in some way, eg. Green Mountain, Point Disaster.

There are very few names from fiction that I am willing to use as city names. A few that make the cut are: Mysidia, Lumengrid, Sandrakkan, and Kyralia.