The Springfield School of Worldbuilding

    One of the greatest temptations in any budding GM's life is the idea of building up an entire world out of nothing. We'll get into more of that in a later post, but one of the more immediate challenges is that when you make a place you also need to make up it's name. Now, there are a myriad of fantasy name generators you can use when making a town, but I'd argue that the best thing you could get inspiration from is a little Springfield.

🎶 I wish that I had Jessie's World 🎶
(original photo by Gary Gershoff)

    Okay sorry, not that Springfield. Rather, I'm talking about these Springfields (Springs Field?):

According to worldatlas.com, there are 41 Springfields on this map.

    

    There are four types of town names: Springfields, Named After People, a combination of the first two, and Other. If you go back far enough into the history of anywhere, that is what you will find.

    A Springfield is a town name that describes the geography or economy of the land around it-Springfield, Fairview, Millbrook and so on. We tend not to notice because it's become a proper noun, but these are compound words. My home state of Connecticut's capital of Hartford is a combination of "hart," meaning deer, and "ford," meaning the place where a river is most crossable.

    The state capital of Connecticut is named "Deer Crossing" and no one notices because our linguistics have shifted. 

    "People" towns are named after people, whether a group or an individual. Paris is named after the Parisii, a group of people who used to live there. My beloved Vancouver is named after George Vancouver, who charted the area for the British in the late 1700s. There are 88 municipalities in the United States named Washington, for Pete's sake. 

    So why do I bring this up?

    Because most preexisting settings put out by RPG companies-the kind that our hypothetical fledgeling worldbuilder will turn to for reference-tend to instead use Fantasy Simlish as the chief naming convention, so they'll do that, too. I know I did, for the longest while, because that's just how you named fantasy towns. I grew up on Golarion, a setting that I love and still do, but Lord help me it steered me in the wrong direction.

    Springfield Worldbuilding acknowledges that most place names are just compound words or references you don't think about anymore, and tries to take advantage of that. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Ease of remembrance. Faerun and Golarion and Athas and all the other big fish have the advantage of having massive amounts of material and preexisting loyal fanbases of lore perverts-I can still tell you about the fall of Sargava or the Ravouneli War of Independence-but you as a GM don't have that. You have 3-6 people with jobs and other stuff going on, and you can't put it all on them. I have a theory that Phandalin is only remember because it was the popular intro adventure. The other cities you see people talk about all follow the Springfield School: Waterdeep, Neverwinter, and Baldur's Gate. Folks make fun of Mount Doom, but it's a damn sight easier to remember than Orodruin.
2. Ease of understanding: When something has a Springfield Name, it's a lot easier for a newcomer to figure out what it is. It doesn't take a brain genius to figure out what Freeport's deal is. The names in Rich Burlew's The New World all evoke striking images: Redwater, Greycliff, Latecastle. RPGs are a multisensory medium, and sometimes it's good to stimulate your mind's eye. If a village is named after a person, you might wonder "Oooh, who was that guy?" See all the memes about "Baldur" for an example of this.
3. It lets the unusual stand out. Usually, when a place name where you live isn't in a language you recognize, it's a sign that something interesting happened there. For example, the city of Memphis in Tennessee is named that because the founders were like "Well, both cities are built on massive rivers." (the original Memphis' name means "enduring and beautiful." Memphis also stands out because its surrounded by towns like Germantown, Collierville, and Whitehaven (it's named after a dude), so it stands out even more. 

    There are absolutely use cases where you want the players to feel unmoored in the setting, for whatever reason. Maybe they're victims of colonialism trying to maintain the traditional names of their land as the occupying power sees fit to rename everything to better suit their tongue. Maybe there's some philosophical stuff, like Nibiru is trying to do. But for most of our Standard Elfgame Adventures, well...you're not the linguistics pervert JRR Tolkien was, nor should you have to be.

From Faerun's Sea of Stars. I was looking around the map, and the town of Skyclave is the one that stood out because it wasn't written in Fantasy Nonsense, for an example of the opposite principle. Shoutout to friend of the blog Arrowed who lent me his hi-res map of Faerun.

    For an example of the three principles of Springfield Worldbuilding done really well, I'm actually going to turn to...uh...Deathbringer. Yes, the names are all crass and embarassing and edgewank, but Frostkill, Squid Marsh, and Pissberg all pretty much immediately conjure visions of what they look like. However, the old Tormentian capital is named Nu'aru, which is...intriguing. Why is it in a different language than everything else? Were the Old Tormentians a different people linguistically than the people who name things now? I don't know, and I'd put even money on the development team not even thinking of it, but it is interesting, and I'll probably be joking about Pissberg until I die a lot earlier than I probably should. 

(Editor's note: Shortly after publication, I realized that Stonetop also fits the bill of  the three principles done well. Every town in the local region has a Springfield name (Barrier Pass, Gordin's Delve, etc.) while the far-off town of Lygos is very explicitly in a foreign language.)

Also, yes, all of those are real

    In conclusion, if you're coming up with names for stuff in a fantasy setting, it's worth thinking about how and why that place got its name rather than coming up with some syllables and putting them together. Each one is a chance to tell a story about the people who live there. One such story, the name of my beloved British Columbia, is a fascinating tale of how much the person ultimately in charge of the province's name simply did not give a shit, and now we're all stuck with her decision (with the piece also having the bonus renaming of a street in the modern day to show how our values change over time).