My d&d game tends to work better when I just name things like “The Nightmare Wood” and “The Old Hills”. The simplicity somehow lands harder.

Reminds me of

Torpenhow Hill is a hill in Cumbria, England. Its name consists of the Old English ‘Tor’, the Welsh ‘Pen’, and the Danish ‘How’ - all of which translate to modern English as ‘Hill’. Therefore, Torpenhow Hill would translate as hill-hill-hill hill

The Nullarbor plain sounds like an Aboriginal word, but it’s just Latin and means “No trees” because there are no trees on it.

That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.

Relevant Mitchell and Webb

Oh and the Newtown.

I lived for a bit in a place that meant “Big nose”.

Sometimes name it after a person, or some shit that went down there, especially if its not someplace important. Like its not the nightmare town, there’s nothing particular about it. So it’s susanstown, and attempts to discover local lore would find stories about the ancient founder that have been embellished over the years.

Pffft, he was plagued with self doubt compared to Cecil Rhodes who went to Africa and said “this place is called Rhodesia now.”

Beijing is “northern capital”, Tokyo is “eastern capital”, and Kyoto is “capital capital”.

Here is a Tom Scott video about it:

https://youtu.be/NUyXiiIGDTo
https://invidious.f5.si/watch?v=NUyXiiIGDTo

Australia is also just called South. And apparently someone proposed the name Borealia (North) for Canada.

Why they changed it …?

“capital_capital_final_thistime.jpg”

(Karl Marx’s revision history)

I’m sorry, who’s wearing the hat?

Half the smaller villages in southern Germany are named “Ried” which comes from reed and roughly means “swampy place”. The other half uses some variation of the suffix “-höfen” which just means “this place consists of farms”

I believe there’s also a Haversham Hill, which is also a hill hill hill hill

In my group if the GM can’t pronounce the name in one try in a way that makes it clear to us how to spell it the players with rename it something more like “Bonertown” or just “Dave”

You . . . are.

People naming things in Australia:

• Townsville
• Western Australia
• Shark bay
• Great Sandy Desert
• Little Sandy Desert
• Snowy Mountains

But you also have wildcards:

• Tasmania (not actually a mental illness)
• Monkey Mia (There are no monkeys, and nobody named Mia)
• Lake disappointment (contains no water)
• Blue mountains (they are mostly green)
• King Island (we don’t recognise its claim to the throne)