How do you name your continents?
Hi everyone, my question comes more related into a ''realistic'' setting, in the sense that, let's say: You have a world with various races or lenguages, then, for the reader to better understand, do you give a general name that is widely used by every race, or do you have different names for every lenguage?
For example, in A Song of Ice and Fire, why is Essos called like that? It looks like the name is widely accepted in the known-world as the offical title, same goes for Westeros.
Thanks!
I can't say speak very much for realistic (I'm very much not a smart person), but given that I tend to build settings in which the cultures are more primal, I often question the need to name large areas such as continents at all. I've always felt that for people who's world generally consists of a very small area surrouding their immediate home, would not see things in a scale as large as that.
It depends on who the creator of the map is and why it was created (POV). Also which name are you using most often in the story? Use the most commonly used name unless it's a map made by a specific race in their own language and/or transliterated/translated into the lengua franca of the region in brackets.
The names of my world of Xeon are based on (Scottish) Gaelic reworked using my own alphabet, where I've introduced additional sounds and a (sort of) algorithm for converting words.
I try to consider who the dominant culture/society is on a given land mass and create a name based on their linguistic root (I base cultures on real-world ones, so that's what I derive the language from). For example, one of my continents is dominated by a Russian expy culture, so the continents name is based in Russian. I sometimes will also make notes about what another major group calls it, but that may just be because I like dwelling in the little details (to continue the above example, the same continent also has a Romani/Cossack culture that uses the same name as the dominant group, and an Inuit/Aleut culture [who are themselves a splinter group from a Polynesian/Maori expy] who recognize the dominant naming but also have their own name for the continent).
To expand on my continents, I named them as follows:
Harvera - Garbh Oirthir 'rough coast' (g becomes h in my language)
Xaron'a - Cathair Āine 'city of light'
Dhearqa - Dā Adharc 'two horns'
Qoval'a - Cuaille 'club' as in the weapon
Fiothyr - Fitheach Tėr 'raven land'
Zaethyr - Deas Tėr 'south land' (d before e or i changes to z and the combination 'eas' changes to 'aeth')
Qashqavand - Cas a' Chadha Bhāin 'foot of the white mountain pass'
Tirvean - Tėr Mheadhain 'centre land'
Sajeda - Saighead 'arrow'
In some cases I have reversed the normal word order from what would be normal in Gaelic to suit the name better.
As KaiAeon pointed out, the names and non-physical things on a map will be determined solely by those who makes the map. For example, a map made for consumption in a particular country may be labeled in that country's language and may have the customary distance scale for that country. Maps for use in more than one country may have multiple labels in different language for the same features and may have multiple distance scales printed on them. Another good example might be a landmass that most folks label "Columbia" in early maps after the fellow who first met the natives of that land, but a fellow named "Amerigo" who happened to be well-published decided that he liked the name "America" for that place and the new name stuck.
To quote a great master on the subject of toponymy: “The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.
The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.”
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