Itâs very important to consider the genre and theme of your story when choosing a town name. Take these names for example, each of which indicates the genre or theme of the story:
Kingâs Landing (sounds fantastical)
Cloud City (sounds futuristic)
Silent Hill (sounds scary)
Sweet Valley (sounds happy and upbeat)
Bikini Bottom (sounds funny)
Radiator Springs (sounds car-related)
Halloween Town (sounds Halloween-related)
Storybrooke (sounds fairytale-related)
2) Time/Place
Itâs also important to consider the time and place where your story takes place. For example, you wouldnât use âVista Gulchâ as a name for a town in Victorian England. You probably wouldnât use it for a town in modern day North Carolina, either. Vista is a Spanish word and would normally be found in places where Spanish names are common, like Spain, Central and South America, the southwest United States (including southern California), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Florida.
3) Size/Settlement Type
An isolated town of 300 people probably wonât be Valley City, but a sprawling metropolis of 30 million could be called Windyville, because it could have started out as a small town and grew into a large city.
4) Geography
Words like gulch, butte,and bayou tend to be regional terms. You probably wouldnât find Berleâs Bayou in Idaho, or Windy Butte in Rhode Island.
Words like mount, cape, and valley are dependent upon terrain. Most of the time, you wonât have a town named âmountâ something unless there are hills or mountains nearby. You wouldnât use âcapeâ unless the town was on a cape, which requires a large body of water.
5) History
Is there a historical person or event that your town might be named after? The Simpsonsâ hometown of Springfield is ironically named after its founder, Jebediah Springfield. Chattanooga, Tennessee is named after the Cherokee town that was there first. Nargothrond, in The Lord of the Rings, is an Elvish town with an Elvish name.
6) Combination of Words
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