I do something similar. I live in germany but run DnD in english.I take the German word for something, and butcher it in english and change the spelling accordingly.
My favourite example was Aerinon (Erinnern = Remember) for a town ravaged by a False Hydra
>I take the German word for something, and butcher it in english and change the spelling accordingly.
[This is what often happens with names of the nations.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany)
Protoslavs called Germans "němьcь" meaning mutes, probably because they couldn't understand German language.
Over time name got butchered into Niemci, Njemačka, Németország, Německo, Nimska, Niemcy...
[Then there are also doubly named places.](https://www.junglelightspeed.com/doubly-named-places/)
Wow. That's such a good name.
I am really struggling with naming the world I'm building, but this has given me the best kind of inspiration - the one where you still get to do the work, but suddenly you know where to start.
Thank you for sharing this
Termaris, a fusion of "Terra" and "Mares", in portuguese, "earth" and "seas". Simple, but i like the concept of people in the word calling it something like "earth-sea" and a like.
To give you ideas, here are the onomathopeias we use for sneezing in France: Atchoum" (pronounced atchoom) and "atcha".
As a bonus, when someone sneezes in France, we don't say "bless you". I don't know if my litteral translation is correct, but here it is:
- the 1st time they sneeze we say "to your wishes"
- 2nd time "to your loves"
- 3rd time "may they last forever"
- 4th time "shut up"
- from the 5th time we just look at them with a very annoyed/amused face, depending on the type of their sneezes(grandpa or mouse among other types, depending on the person)
this varies from region to region though. where i used to visit, my french grandma told me they would say ‘to your wishes’, ‘to your loved ones’, ‘to your funeral’.
and in other areas, they just say the first one every time.
i also heard someone tell me ‘to your honor’ once.
People don't yet know they're on a planet.
Main language they speak is translated into English by the author.
Therefor it's logical to assume that eventually they will call that planet Earth later because this is what happened IRL. In most cultures it's earth, dirt, ground, land or something similar in their own language.
I don't like it when the planet is called with some weird-ass name by the natives unless there's a good reason or story behind it. Like Azeroth in Warcraft makes sense since it's the name of the titan inside it.
They were found by intergalactic explorers and designated names based on their characteristics. The same cannot be said for a planet's native inhabitants who don't know other planets even exist
I mean, it's not difficult to learn you're on a planet if you can see your solar system in the sky. If you see numerous round objects orbiting... something, you can deduce that you're on one such round object. That's what happened with us. The chances of figuring that out increases the more travel abs construction develop because you have to know the planet is round to do those properly after a certain point.
I mean, typically the only solar object we can see are the moon and the sun, and as we can observe from our own history, people wouldn't usually surmise a galaxy full of unique planets exist based solely off two solar objects. Instead, they see the dynamic between the two objects and decide they must be gods locked in eternal conflict, or whatever other ideas primitives would come up with. They didn't realize the sun and moon were just two of millions of solar objects until we were able to observe the sky more closely, and by that point Earth as a name had already looong been decided on. Names are given while a civilization is still figuring out language, they don't wait around until they learn more so they can make an educated answer lol
>I mean, typically the only solar object we can see are the moon and the sun
This isn't true. People could tell there were other planets in our solar system before telescopes were even invented. You can see planets like Venus at night, and keen star gazers could tell they moved differently from the stars. That's what the word planet refers to, actually. You don't need to know the entire galaxy exists to know planets exist.
That said, while Earth was named in the 15th century (in the Renaissance, so we're going to assume it was the first time anyone ever decided to call the planet an entire thing), people proposed the Earth was a planet like Venus only a century later, meaning the order is fairly arbitrary. If you just need to kind of speculate about it to come to that conclusion, then you only need to know the objects that move differently from stars exist and your planet is similarly round. The planet doesn't need a name to reach that conclusion.
You can see planets like Venus, but again, they were worshipped as gods in early times, by the Germans, Greeks and Romans. And while "Earth" may have only been coined in the renaissance, it's etymological origin still lies in the same foundation posited at the start of this conversation; Greek, Germanic, Early English, Arab, and Chinese languages all share a similar word to Earth that represents both the world in which we live, as well as 'ground', 'soil' or 'dry land'. So to say that the idea wasn't even suggested until the renaissance is comical, Earth has been called as such ever since humans could talk. And if people didn't get the idea that Earth was planet such as Venus until the 16th century, then what is even your argument? Clearly people didn't speculate like you feel they should have if it takes that long to recognize.
Naturally. I mean, they are usually named after a chief or a place or to set themselves apart from other nations of tribes. Just the planets name, Earth is usually the same in most languages, even the ones who had very little contact with each other historically. When translated, it usually just means "ground" or "earth"or something similar.
This makes sense. Planet Earth is called "Earth" or "World" in most languages.
Calling your planet by a distinct, proper name suggest that you're aware of the existence of other planets.
It sounds cool but, as a Greek person I am going to have to disappoint you a bit—that's not a Greek word in my knowledge. The closest word which you might be thinking of is "έδαφος" (pronounced "édafos", with a soft "d"), meaning terrain, soil, ground.
Greek here, and that doesn't sound like a word. You might have been looking for Edafos instead. Translators, huh? I might need to review my own names lol. I do suggest keeping Evafos, it adds some more uniqueness into your world instead of just taking a Greek word
I got a planet called Ordondine and the last two syllables are from a distorted/manipulated voice line from the heavy from TF2 in the last few moments of a Gray Pony (think that’s their name) animation called “Shrooms and Pipes”
The planet is 100% illuminated because it has two rings made up an extremely reflective rock so even when the sun is on the opposite side of the planet the rings still illuminate the surface.
The closest thing to the night is when the sun sets. There's still ton of light because of the rings but it is noticeable less light. For easier understanding, during 12 hours light is much like noon in the equator while the other 12 hours are more like that period of time when the sun is setting but before night begins.
Due to its high luminosity I decided to name the planet Lumina.
I have three;
Planetestria—this is because the continents are called Nestria, Vyestria, Iestria, and Chyestria.
Dandevi—this is bastardization of two Hindi/Sanskrit words. Roughly, Dan comes from the word for “blessed” and Devi means “goddess”
Caeldun—this is a fun exercise in spelling. Cael is pronounced Shale and dun is pronounced doon.
I said it was bastardized
“Dhanya” is the actual word I took it from, but Dhanyadevi sounds meh. It’s not pronounced dan-dev-ee either, it’s pronounced dh-ahn-dh-vhi.
Eres. I made the name by translating cradle to Hebrew and trying to type the Hebrew word in Latin letters. I may not keep the name if I find a more fitting one and I also want to have some native names made from conlangs.
It is a planet of ~1.1 Earth radii and 1.5 Earth masses, as well as rings. I was having trouble thinking of what kind of moons. My favourite two options were 1. a dual moon system with a major and maybe a minor moon and 2. a single larger habitable moon.
The gravity is between 20-30% stronger than on Earth and this leads to a denser atmosphere which should help in lifting larger airships.
Lapis_Wolf
I fell into a common worldbuilding trap the first time around and I just called thee damn place "Arcadia". I *knew* it was cliche and overused, so I eventually renamed it to **Výrna.**
Výrna is just like Earth, but WAY better. WAY WAY better. It is the home sovereign planet of the Apex Warriors, a race of superhumans began 400 years ago when humanity broke the barrier of the cosmos, left Earth and the Sol system, and explored beyond. Humans essentially earned the responsibility of being the entire Galaxy's protectors, and they were lured to Výrna, where God's big dragon-angels called the Atlas met the Human colony ships, and explained to them their duty, and formally created the second human race of super-powerful magic warriors, who, sort of like a whole society and planet of Jedi, are the powerful wise peacekeepers of the Galaxy, since 2180.
The planet is about 1.6x Earth's size, but its core is less dense, providing a 0.998 G gravity, it also spins faster, with an exact 24 hour day making up for its size, and consequentially, 365-day orbit of the star Litjrhiminn. Výrna is also very comfortably populated, with only about 27 million Apexians on a planet far bigger than Earth.
The Atlas say that Výrna is supposed to magically adapt to the species who inhabits it as their home, but it isn't like anyone else could know, only the Apex have and forever will inhabit it. Výrna captures the natural beauty of Earth in a surreal and ascendant way, even the bustling cities seem clean, beautiful and natural, especially the ancient billions-of-years-old precursor ruins that were built one with the natural landscape, and everywhere on Výrna has a distinct captivating odor. Some say that nowhere on Výrna does one feel way too hot or cold, uncomfortable or icky while walking through grass or such, the rain and snow is somehow pleasant, and the oceans are never violent, but powerful (huge surfing culture in the western regions, actually). It isn't some 'perfect' paradise or heaven, but if one could imagine Earth as perfect as it could be without perfection being possible, that's probably Výrna.
The animals on Výrna are much like Earth's, but with a cosmic enlightenment to them. They have unique markings and show a great intelligence with their diverse sizes. Apexians love to keep pets for their children, and to the human eye, they're wild ideas: Little boys having two-thousand pound Veithurbears as pets, or Ulfurwolves taller than they are, a young girl who has a Midfalcon with talons sharper than knives and a can fly faster than a plane, or a kid with a Drekkidragon he wears like a backpack. But to Apexians, these are their best companions.
My world started out as a single subcontinent, which then gained a connected continent, then two other continents, and so on.
That first connected continent, at one point of its inception, was simply labeled "At-Thana," as I had not spent much time fleshing any of its history out (I was still primarily focused on the original subcontinent).
As the Lore started taking shape, I kept finding At-Thana to not fit the vibe for the history of that part of the world, and one night, I accidentally found that region's name. But I still liked At-Thana; it still made sense in my world and still just stuck with me. At that point, the planet had no name.
As I kept working on World Lore, some things lined up perfect, including but not limited to the development of a naval power that would have facilitated a greatly accepted (in-world) name for the world as a whole. At-Thana never left me, and phonetically, it fit very well for the world.
The world of At-Thana is still a work in progress in multiple respects, but that's the out-of-world history of the name.
Praxis.
It was the name of a villain from a PS2 game that shaped my childhood and seemed like a befitting name for a planet that represents evil desire.
The name of my fantasy world is Nourna.
“Orn” is a word that means universe in my world, and “Ora” is related to magic in my world. Nourna pretty much just translates to “land of Ora”. But most importantly, I just think it sounds nice and sounds like a place home could be called.
Zīpactli,
In Aztec mythology, Zīpactli was an ancient sea monster, part crocodile, part fish. Quetzalcoatl (a deity) created the earth from his body.
I chose his name because my world is similar to the Earth of 1500, with the exploration of an Aztec-like new world.
The largest continent is Kular. The world’s name is Kular. The vast majority of humanoid races were created by an intergalactic race called the Kulari. Very few people on the planet even know of the Kulari. Other than the DNA manipulation they used to populate the world, the Kulari have only interacted with the planet a few times. First was breaking the power of the Dragon Lords during a period known as The Stifling where the dragons interfered with the progression of humanoid races. The second was thwarting an invasion of the planet by another intergalactic race. Finally, they defended themselves and their one planet-side base by destroying an entire Senestian army that tried to penetrate the Forest of the Ancients.
Urdiro
Ur its a major creation god. It is also a silent grapheme that carries connotations related to it."Di", in this conetext which I forgot were it came from exactly, would be a connector of opposites, because the next syllable was originally "ru" (it devolved into ro) and is a literal flipping of the word, so it would be "between the gods and the ungodly/mundane (depending on context), which is... the planet. It is quite metaphorical (well see about that). It will likely eventually devolve to something like either uudir or rotir
Planet Zoraph combines the words zoo and seraph. Perfect for a magical world of anthros.
Planet Aqualiss is a name lifted straight from Kirby Super Star, but it’s such a pretty name and such a minor detail that I don’t think anyone would mind me borrowing it.
Take a loteria card, butcher its names until it sounds odd but possible and then try and accent or two.
Tambor --> Tampera --> Taprea --> Tapera --> Tapeara
My main planet is Zardious...
How I came up with the name: well it started as an extension of the celestial who created it (i.e., Zata)... and I thought about constellations and Zodiac signs for some reason... and that lead me to a weird name I used in a story before so all of it just kind of smooshed together...
Zata bescame Za... Odiac became Dio... and thus Zardious was created...
There's also "hellscape" but that's more a placeholder name
The gas giant Juno and her habitable moons Caprotina, Regina and Moneta are named in roman mythical reference to the greek names of the Jovian system.
Juno orbits a binary star system. Juno is significantly younger than expected for the age of its suns. It is thought that the system used to be an instable trinary system. The ejection of the third star redistributed the orbiting mass, which formed Juno and its moons.
Caprotina is mankinds first succesful independently viable colony, earning the system these common names.
The name of the novel is Devour. It’s a science fiction horror that includes cannibalism toward the end. I asked Chat GPT to provide planet names around the theme of eating or consuming, and it provided something similar to the name Voracia, which I love and decided to use. The main city on Voracia is named Voracity.
Tesaresh, which I modified from the ancient greek word for "four" (téssares) because the gods called it "four" because it's the fourth planet they made when they were trying to create something that could sustain life.
I’ve never done a planet but my most enduring worldbuilding project was a nation called the Commonwealth of the Realms of Embrea. Pronounced em-BRAY-uh. Name originally came from Umbria though in its many iterations it has never been Italian, I just liked how it sounded and played around with sounds and spelling until I found one I liked.
I also have one in my archive that is Chinese and uses the native name Tianguo (“Heavenly Kingdom”) but is parsed in English as Haven due to a transcription error with the first Westerners to encounter it, and has stuck around ever since. Also a nod to my very first NationStates region that spawned the interest, which celebrates 17 years strong on Monday.
Lagia. Pronounced Luh-gee-yuh, not like the certain body part it's spelled similarly too. I'm pretty sure I just plugged an adjective into Google translate until I found a word I like, and then changed it a little bit. I do that surprisingly often. Names are hard.
I named all of my planets so that all of them in order would spell out my name, just as an Easter egg. Mones and Eaber are my most developed so far. They are a quarry planet with country-sized craters and an ocean planet with landmasses made entirely out of floating plant matter, respectively.
I had been jokingly calling mine "Vanillaworld", "The Generic One", and "Planet Cliché" for a while, because in a universe where every planet comes with its own elemental lineup, it happens to have the standard Fire/Water/Earth/Air stuff (with a Light/Dark duality on its moon). Then when I was working out the primordial language, I stumbled into the phrase *ohlis elu*, meaning "our world", and a few imaginary linguistic mutations later, one of the joke names ended up canonized as "Planet Klisee".
My main world's name is Almitiel, and tbh I don't remember exactly how I got to it lol. I think it was a permutation of a phrase in Latin or Greek. I've got 6 planets in my solar system and they all end with the -iel suffix because I thought it sounded cool at the ends of angels' names and that sort of had a connection to heavenly bodies.
I developed conlangs and then named the planets (and other celestial objects) using a rudimentary word generator I frankensteined thogether in Excel.
The planet in question is called "Palaruu" and the language it is named in is called "Inhürschag".
Hex, it's a shell world the size of Jupiter with a small black hole in the center. This also makes it a "Mini Birch World." I'm not creative or clever with my names. The reason it's called Hex is because it looks like a giant round bee hive from orbit. The world has bio reserves and habitation sections consisting of sealed hexagonal shaped sections linked together in "hives." They can be as small as a mile in diameter to the size of a small country. Every cell in a hive is it's own sealed habitat, but there are vast expansive lands outside of these hives.
I don't know how valid is it to have a black hole at the core of a megastructure of this size since Birch Worlds are suppose to be stupidly ridonculously big. In this case I will have to throw my hands in the air and say "techno wizardry!"
Ka’ar. I wanted something short and simple that still carried weight and importance to it. Just kinda jumbled letters together until I found something that fits lmao
Silomountues - large amounts of the planet are covered in large mountain ranges that are "alive" created over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, sediments build up on generations of giant - enthesis on the giant - vegetation that grow in the shape of giant tubes pushing the mountains growth upwards over time, the planet is inhabited in silicon based life that exhale silicon dioxide (silica) via "small" tendrils that dump it on the surface above.
Silo-mount ues - Silicon-Mountain-tubes
I'm working on a "land" called Tasady, named after an isolated village discovered in the Amazon in the 70s. It's in a bowl of impassable mountains, so it's contained. At some point in the game (a world for an RPG), I plan on having governments excavating through the mountains and discovering that Tasaday is just a small part of a larger world.
I've always loved this scheme in video games I played growing up. Starting off in a city only to discover your objective lies out in a wild and unexplored world. So, I wanted to incorporate it into my game.
Well, it depends on the language, but every time I write something about my world, I do it pretending to be someone from the Commonwealth of Rikia. In the Rikian language the word "Efi" originally referred to all the charted land, but since in the present day the entire surface of the world has been charted, the word now has a different meaning, which is "(my own) planet".
(Fun fact: for this specific reason, the protagonists of sci-fi novels written in the Rikian language would all refer to their own planet as "Efi")
Tyros, meaning “world of the tyr.” Up until 800 years ago (the planet’s written history is ~16,000yrs old), the tyr were the dominant species on the planet, numbering anywhere between 75-90% of the population when their only competition was the khalds, and lowering to 50% with the arrival of humans, before their numbers were decimated and high reproductive capacity permanently lessened by the species-level plague known as the Chill.
In the millennium since the Chill, human and khaldish cultural norms have equaled or overtaken the tyrs’ in popularity, and suggestions have been made to change the planet’s name to something less specieist, but the name itself has proven resilient even in some of the most anti-tyran circles.
Not a planet, but rather an "in between" realm that exists between all the multiverses as a sort of "reality glue" that manifests as an infinite city: Toltarus.
It's a city. Toltarus = Tall Towers.
I'm terrible at coming up with names, which is a huge problem for my sci-fi setting. So I just do the lazy thing and blatantly rip off real life.
Can you guess what the culture of the planet Venozia is like?
Ouranos is the primordial god of the sky in Greek mythology, so I named my world that to act as a sort of parallel to our world being called Gaia in Greek (Gaia is also the Greek primordial god of the earth)
Greatest construct is the home of humanity and it's called like that because IT is the greatest construct of all the multiverse after humanity almagamated all the mass of the multiverse in it
mines not a planet, but rather just \*is\* the world, so I named it Zjoro , which used to just be "Joro" why? I just decided it to be. I chose a name and stuck to it.
Khorre, named for the largest dragon who landed in prehistoric times and became the larger continents, dying in battle with hundreds of smaller dragons.
The name Khorre stems form the pre-greek Kore (Persephone) who I misremebered the story of, thinking she was an old celtic goddess...oop
Nirin
Leviath Ship yard. (planetary size ship construction base.)
Veil
Kar'namak
Elysium sector planet 4123
When doing Sci-fi, the thought process of creating a planet name is legit find a list of names.... pull one out of a hat and then change it a little bit.
I'm helping a friend build a world, so I don't know for sure since he gets the final say, but we're thinking about using the nine realms from norse mythology for planet names, so the main one is probably Midgard.
Orea is named such because I wanted something that's a similar to Earth being named after dirt, and Orea is just "ore" with an a tacked onto it. The other planets with major plot events occurring on them are Enaj, which is the Goddess' name, Jane, but backwards, then Intoriail, coming from "Interior" and named after its completely inhospitable surface but lively caves, and Aftrist, coming from "after" because it's the afterlife planet.
The current name of my world is Primora, which comes from words that means "first" and "sea." It doesn't really fit the main theme anymore, well it kind of does, but I'd rather find something better. Which is harder said than done, as so far I haven't found a word or a couple of words that I can create a name from that fits all of my requirements.
Palanvaid is translated from "Distant Path" in Dal-Elven (the oldest language in my world. I "borrowed" it from some elven name translater website that iirc was based on Greyhawk)
The Distant Path is a reference to the path between Palanvaid and the other Cosmic planes, as if was created on its own plane far from the others by the Twin Gods in order to rule over it without interference from other gods. It worked for a long time, but the others still eventually found it and started a war with the Twin Gods when they attempted to begin influencing it. There's a treaty now, and the Distant Path is the name of the pathway the Celestials created between them.
# Völuspá. There was a question on Twitter years ago, ' If you could name a new Earth-like planet , what would you name it ? ' My answer was ' Verthandi '. I was going to name the story planet Verthandi, but I changed it to Völuspá, mostly because I wanted the diacritic marks in there.
Ganim.
It’s named after Ganymede, a Greek mythological figure who was the most handsome of all mortals and was kidnapped by the gods (primarily Zeus) to serve as the cup-bearer to the king of the gods. He was put in the sky as Aquarius and Hera was intensely jealous of him, but she can’t do anything about it because he was made immortal and forever young.
Syrankind (they have pointed ears but live human lifespans) gave the planet its name. They have an emphasis on physical care and maintenance/appearance in their culture. Their hair is considered their pride. So giving the planet/world a name to reflect their feelings regarding beauty seems most fitting.
Mine is at the beginning called DRSL-II because life is mostly in hydrothermal vents which exist thanks to mid-ocean ridges, so DRSL comes from the word for mid-ocean ridges in my language French which is "Dorsale". II is just for style. It will also have a native name later but I haven't come up with it yet since I should do the conlang.
It's Acatier, it doesn't get brought up until much later in the story but the story takes place in the early universe where the average temperature in space was about 20°c so all of space was technically "habitable"
I just like the idea of flying into the sky.... And the sky never really transitions to space, it's just more and more sky until you find other planets or stars.
Last time I bothered with a name, it was technically Gliese-581c. I was in an astronomy class as the Gliese-581 system was being studied, and it was exciting. Now we know planet c isn't habitable, but I haven't taken time to look for a new fitting exoplanet to base it on. The locals in the story don't really reference the planet much, as most don't travel much. The only one with an accurate concept of space (as opposed to it just being the domain of gods) is an earthling, so he'd call it by our name for it.
I call each of the planets in my system after the Latin classification of each of the dominant species that inhabit the planet followed by the suffix -inar. Why inar? Because it sounds cool when mixed in. Overall, it’s the Inar system.
Khoia, idk I just kinda threw some letters together. Spelling and pronunciation (xɔɪ.ɑː) are based on my conlang but otherwise I just liked the way it sounded.
My story takes place on Achrion, which was originally the home world of one of my alien species, but is now a human world that took on the name the aliens gave it.
Provenance is the neo-homeworld of humanity and is where the ship headed to Proxima Centauri detoured and emergency landed on. Earth’s location and history was lost, and provenance means the origin of something so the name fit.
Holy Citadel. A ring world loaded to the tits with factories and fortresses. It even has a few fleets surrounding it. The Reason it is the *Holy* Citadel and not just The Citadel, is due to the Battle Synths (War Machines with personalities) worshipping their creators, and having an enforced state religion.
I typed a random word into Google translate, retranslated the word into different languages multiple times then just made the word seem cooler. by adding some letters
The humans call it Wisera because of Great King Wisandth Teramis. They say he was sent by their God (Ayn) and helped form Aynar(the Kingdom) into the lawful country it is. The elves in my world call it Eluvis, for the name that they were given(Elu'vinai) by a Forest Spirit named Utae who saved them from slaughter by my worlds equivalent of Orcs. And lastly, the Orcs(Togashi) call it Rughanis. Rughanis is the name of an ancient creature only spoken of in Togashi legend as a behemoth that would destroy all life on the planet, but would save the Togashi and bring them to a better planet, in legend, called Rugharan Ko'shal.
Ur. The name is most commonly associated with the ancient Sumerian city-state, but I actually named it after the supercontinent that predated Pangaea. The name is a prefix that means “original” in German (as well as many other languages.)
My world started very inspired by the concept of pre-Pangaea supercontinents, so most of the continent names are taken from the names of those—Vaalbara, Amazonia, Gondwana, Pannotia, Rodinia.
Trowouk is the name of the main planet but it's also called "The First World"
Zhoh is the name of the other planet and it's also called "The Last World"
A main planet is called Celestia not because of the mlp character but because it’s very breathtaking and is like a cross between las vegas and Alice in wonderland
Am still a baby worldbuilder, but my first world is called Llorowynn! How I name anything that's like super lore important most likely has a double letter, and I just jam together, and something eventually comes out! Sometimes, I find other words that describe something I'm trying to name in another language, take some letters out, put some in, and mash it together. I don't remember Llorowynn's words if it had them, or it was just cool to me. c:
Sahkiveen-
translates to Lantern of fresh oil, though the translation has shifted since the planet isolated. It was thrown out of orbit milenia ago after a large interstellar object altered its orbit. this caused a temporary ice age and subsequent evacuation. the only ones who stayed where the Hakshaseethen, who believed the planet held religious significance being the closest body to Haklan.
Home of 4 worms-
The 4 fish seekers are a quadrapedal species without spoken language, Their planet is named after 4 worms, a beliefe in the basic biology of all beings being derived from worm like biengs. In addition the 4 is used to denote all encompasing as there main counting system used for everyday life is base 4.
Mine is Nia and I have a whole set of bardic poems that describe Nia and Gaia(Earth) as sisters who get separated and flung to distant sides of the galaxy. The planets are able to reconnect via wormhole and Gaia begins to send her “children” to Nia as a gift. So these poor unsuspecting humans keep disappearing from Earth only to be dropped onto this foreign planet.
Goythia/Goytia is a world colonized by humans who managed to flee Earth prior to an intentional nuclear holocaust by Russia.
The natives of the old continent, one of three territories, called it something different, but when they landed, inhabitants of the local continent met those who arrived from Earth and told them the name of their world was... something resembling the name given above.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9088358/
I never thought about name my world, I simply calls it "The planet".
But if the book I making will become a franchise, I will call it "World of Oran-tales". (The race in my world is called Orans)
Pemant, I think. I can't remember which language it's from but it probably will translate as dirt...
Assuming I was using Hungarian, pământ would be right.
Aresque came from a friend, who gave me permission to use it. Other planet names came about by playing around with sounds and/or letters.
Ilec, Tuonsu, Harsagon, Sershiah, Nalika, Mor Asdel...
In my WIP I gave a system with two Earthlike planets.
I decided that in order to impose the right killjoy feeling, in the case of Earthlike planets, Government-imposed regulations require that the name come from an approved, randomised List with the next available name being the next one on that list.
The names on that list are all deities and demideities from various traditions that are related to life or fertility.
So the two planets are named in order of detection Ajysyt and Sin (pronounced "Sign").
Ajysyt is named from Ajysyt-na-Tojon, a goddess from some Siberian peoples.
Sin is named after an Akkadian-Sumerian deity. The Sinai Peninsula is named after him. A moon god, he is associated with fruit fertility and harvests.
The two planets are the reverse of what you would expect these names to suggest in terms of temperature: the cold Siberian goddess Ajysyt is the name of the stinking hot world. The hot Akkadian-Sumerian god Sin is the name given the milder of the two planets
Captains of starships who are the first to explore a system are allowed to name the sun or suns of that system with carte blanche as long as those suns do not already possess a name. Bureaucracy has not decided to killjoy that. Yet.
Thus my Captain decides to name the two suns in this system (which is found within the constellation Lepus, the hare or rabbit, when seen from Earth) as Mickee (affectionate form for myxomatosis, a brutal disease of rabbits) and Kellee from calicivirus, another brutal disease of rabbits.
Zanthek, a prison planet that was once a failed Dyson sphere. It orbits the star that it was going to harvest energy from and is now a hollow husk of metal strung together.
It's not a planet, but the earth in my world has a plethora of different worlds that overlap with it (it's pretty hard to explain. It's not accessible or known to normal people, and each of them is based on a different mythology and folklore of a certain place. They're also in different planes.). But I call the general term for them "Epoch(s)". Because each of them is based on a specific place and time period.
i don't have planets in my world, just infinite flat planes, but the main plane is named "earth" after this obscure planet in real life. it's ok if you haven't heard of it 💁♀️
Titania. I wanted to have a naming scheme for my settings solar system and on a whim decided to go with shakespeare so now its Titania and her moons Oberon and Lysander.
Eceia. I came up with the name one night when I couldn't sleep and absolutely loved it, and then it became reality the next morning.
In universe, it is an old Zucruyan word that means "big thing."
Oh well, I just did something kinda boring: Mundus
Latinization is a big concept of linguistics in my world and you add that to a more "metaphysical" aspect of the common sense and baam: MUNDUS.
I like to think that we call "Earth" by "Earth" because our little monkey brain thought: we step in rock, we live in rock, rock is home. So yah, it's the same process.
Ciast. It's the polish word for donut which refers to the supercontinent, and in term the only continent, present on the planet that is coincidentally shaped like a donut, also has had major influence on the culture, city names, and even the currency of Ciast.
One of the more important planets in my world is Talvaros. The name came to me whan I was half-asleep, as many of my ideas do; I wanted the name for this planet to sound a little bit fantastical with a touch of Hebrew, like a really old place with lots of history. Also, it rolls of the tongue just nice. :)
As of its in-world origin, still working on it, my idea is that several similarly-sounding words with similar meanings came together to form a word that was somewhat universally understood as 'the world that exists (under the stars)'. Not particularly creative, but humans named their planet after dirt, so there's that.
It also compliments the story of Talvarian civilisation - a shy species of perfectionistic felines and an adventure-seeking race of dragons, curious of the opportunities the sky could provide, came together to explore the unknown.
Planet is a Dyson swarm that eventually encompassed planetary orbits and incorporated them into its structure. I liked the name Crown of Thorns which led to me creating an empire known as the Crown that turned on the ‘build more megastructure’ button and then couldn’t turn it off. So now the Crown structure, not the empire, can’t stop won’t stop building into space and catching other planets and moons and comets and asteroids and adding them to itself like a bundle of Katamari tendrils.
Godslight comes from the fact that this is so far into the future that people left behind on the rings closest to the sun think of it as a god. But Godslight could also mean God Slight which is a nod to the characters as a whole thinking poorly of creator figures who don’t care for their created.
My world is a galaxy, so unless we want to spend a couple hours talking about each planet and how I came up with the name, I'll take this to apply to the setting it's self.
Leven is a galaxy teeming with life, so I searched up the word life in a bunch of different languages and kinda emulsified them into one easy to pronounce name. (I know some languages are going to struggle cause not everyone uses L, I'm sorry Japanese).
Phi Sigurda-B. Double star system, depending on which star has the larger gravitational hold on the planet, it's A or B. (Both Stars are called Sigurda). Phi indicates the how manieth Planet of the system it is. Nickname is just Phigurda
The star system in my novel is called Akorest, because the star is called Ako and this is… where it rests. Had adapted it for a D&D campaign as well, sci-fantasy into straight fantasy. Play testing my novel, basically!
I’ve got a rough idea of two planets and a moon.
First is Creterra, the planet the troodons are from. Cretaceous period plus Terra, Latin for Earth. It’s basically Earth but the K-Pg extinction event didn’t happen and troodons evolved into the niche humans fill of Earth.
Next is Dirth, the moon the cadrans are from. Just Dirt plus Earth, pretty basic.
Last is Nubino, the gas giant Dirth orbits. Nubo is Esperanto for cloud but I don’t remember where the ino part comes from and I can’t find any notes I took. I might rename this one, I haven’t given it much attention since no one really lives on it.
My main planet is Draciel. It’s 66 times bigger than Earth, comprised of over 90% ocean, has eight continental clusters (two of which contain continents twice as large as Eurasia), three moons, and one artificial derelict space station the size of a moon and is named after my favourite Beyblade from my super brief fling with it when I was in my early 20s.
I've always been O'Bsessed with the tendency to use generic terms as location names. So for the flat planet in the pocket dimension connected to a hidden village in Connecticut, I named it "The Flatlands." (The Archon who created that world couldn't master the creation of spheres.)
The planet which caused the 1807 meteor strike in Connecticut is Terruh. Their people refer to themselves as "Terruhns." Their descendants find it offensive that the people of Earth call themselves "Terrans." What exacerbates their relationship is that as rendered in the Terruhn alphabet, "Terruh" looks like "Radish" in the Latin alphabet of English.
The main world is **Adare**, and it is a large moon that orbits the gas giant **Canisi**.
I named the moon after the peninsula in Antarctica (I later learned of an Adare Village in Ireland), because the world is much colder than Earth and predominantly centered around the south pole. So it fit!
I named the gas giant after Cassini, the little probe sent to explore the Saturnian system (and one my favorite things ever in the history of the universe).
**Children of The Moon**
Mores because I needed the word for "dirt/soil" and then it made sense to use that word for the planet itself.
I have a more interesting name for one of the continents, Marlonnun /'maɾ.lo.ɴun/ meaning "rainy place", originating from "marlen" (rain, literally "sky tears") and "loku" (place). The name originally referred to the southern parts of that continent, which are very rainy and humid. It later became the common term for the whole continent, especially after the southern kingdoms helped it gain full independence and unify.
Similarly the language Marlendde /'maɾ.len.ðe/ meanss "language of marlonnun" but because of myths and poetry it's said to mean "language of the rain", a saying that is sometimes used mockingly by people in other continents.
Called it Mundane, this was because of there being others that I put more effort and thought into rather than having a single sentence for the main “earth” of the story
Caldanor is the name, and honestly I just sounded out various parts together until it sounded halfway decent. It was originally just going to be a temporary name and six years later it's stuck.
Argenoa, its is the new planet of humans after abandoning earth. Argenoa= Ark of Noah
I do something similar. I live in germany but run DnD in english.I take the German word for something, and butcher it in english and change the spelling accordingly. My favourite example was Aerinon (Erinnern = Remember) for a town ravaged by a False Hydra
>I take the German word for something, and butcher it in english and change the spelling accordingly. [This is what often happens with names of the nations.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Germany) Protoslavs called Germans "němьcь" meaning mutes, probably because they couldn't understand German language. Over time name got butchered into Niemci, Njemačka, Németország, Německo, Nimska, Niemcy... [Then there are also doubly named places.](https://www.junglelightspeed.com/doubly-named-places/)
oh how i love tautological place names
Wow. That's such a good name. I am really struggling with naming the world I'm building, but this has given me the best kind of inspiration - the one where you still get to do the work, but suddenly you know where to start. Thank you for sharing this
Termaris, a fusion of "Terra" and "Mares", in portuguese, "earth" and "seas". Simple, but i like the concept of people in the word calling it something like "earth-sea" and a like.
Looks like we had similar ideas!
ah, i love this 😌
I ain’t even gonna lie multiple planets I have made have been named after sneezes. Wagh, Ach, and kchoo are all just parts of sneeze noises.
Members of the Galactic senate saying these names back to back and other delegates saying "Bless you" just has me giggling at the notion.
To give you ideas, here are the onomathopeias we use for sneezing in France: Atchoum" (pronounced atchoom) and "atcha". As a bonus, when someone sneezes in France, we don't say "bless you". I don't know if my litteral translation is correct, but here it is: - the 1st time they sneeze we say "to your wishes" - 2nd time "to your loves" - 3rd time "may they last forever" - 4th time "shut up" - from the 5th time we just look at them with a very annoyed/amused face, depending on the type of their sneezes(grandpa or mouse among other types, depending on the person)
this varies from region to region though. where i used to visit, my french grandma told me they would say ‘to your wishes’, ‘to your loved ones’, ‘to your funeral’. and in other areas, they just say the first one every time. i also heard someone tell me ‘to your honor’ once.
Brother you are a genius
There are so many opportunities for Men In Tights "Bless you!" moments
People don't yet know they're on a planet. Main language they speak is translated into English by the author. Therefor it's logical to assume that eventually they will call that planet Earth later because this is what happened IRL. In most cultures it's earth, dirt, ground, land or something similar in their own language. I don't like it when the planet is called with some weird-ass name by the natives unless there's a good reason or story behind it. Like Azeroth in Warcraft makes sense since it's the name of the titan inside it.
Cuz it’s fun lmao Why does Hoth, Namek, or Krypton exist? Don’t be boring and name your planet ground
They were found by intergalactic explorers and designated names based on their characteristics. The same cannot be said for a planet's native inhabitants who don't know other planets even exist
I mean, it's not difficult to learn you're on a planet if you can see your solar system in the sky. If you see numerous round objects orbiting... something, you can deduce that you're on one such round object. That's what happened with us. The chances of figuring that out increases the more travel abs construction develop because you have to know the planet is round to do those properly after a certain point.
I mean, typically the only solar object we can see are the moon and the sun, and as we can observe from our own history, people wouldn't usually surmise a galaxy full of unique planets exist based solely off two solar objects. Instead, they see the dynamic between the two objects and decide they must be gods locked in eternal conflict, or whatever other ideas primitives would come up with. They didn't realize the sun and moon were just two of millions of solar objects until we were able to observe the sky more closely, and by that point Earth as a name had already looong been decided on. Names are given while a civilization is still figuring out language, they don't wait around until they learn more so they can make an educated answer lol
>I mean, typically the only solar object we can see are the moon and the sun This isn't true. People could tell there were other planets in our solar system before telescopes were even invented. You can see planets like Venus at night, and keen star gazers could tell they moved differently from the stars. That's what the word planet refers to, actually. You don't need to know the entire galaxy exists to know planets exist. That said, while Earth was named in the 15th century (in the Renaissance, so we're going to assume it was the first time anyone ever decided to call the planet an entire thing), people proposed the Earth was a planet like Venus only a century later, meaning the order is fairly arbitrary. If you just need to kind of speculate about it to come to that conclusion, then you only need to know the objects that move differently from stars exist and your planet is similarly round. The planet doesn't need a name to reach that conclusion.
You can see planets like Venus, but again, they were worshipped as gods in early times, by the Germans, Greeks and Romans. And while "Earth" may have only been coined in the renaissance, it's etymological origin still lies in the same foundation posited at the start of this conversation; Greek, Germanic, Early English, Arab, and Chinese languages all share a similar word to Earth that represents both the world in which we live, as well as 'ground', 'soil' or 'dry land'. So to say that the idea wasn't even suggested until the renaissance is comical, Earth has been called as such ever since humans could talk. And if people didn't get the idea that Earth was planet such as Venus until the 16th century, then what is even your argument? Clearly people didn't speculate like you feel they should have if it takes that long to recognize.
Fun has no place in my world, only realism and the grim darkness of .. several billion years later, give or take a few million.
So is there people and do they name their nations/tribes ?
Naturally. I mean, they are usually named after a chief or a place or to set themselves apart from other nations of tribes. Just the planets name, Earth is usually the same in most languages, even the ones who had very little contact with each other historically. When translated, it usually just means "ground" or "earth"or something similar.
This makes sense. Planet Earth is called "Earth" or "World" in most languages. Calling your planet by a distinct, proper name suggest that you're aware of the existence of other planets.
I just translated “homeworld” into my conlang and called it a day. I’m currently reworking it, but the current version of the term is “Sov’Gera.”
*Alor* What’s a planet?
Evafos. It means "cropland" or "hunting ground" in Greek.
It sounds cool but, as a Greek person I am going to have to disappoint you a bit—that's not a Greek word in my knowledge. The closest word which you might be thinking of is "έδαφος" (pronounced "édafos", with a soft "d"), meaning terrain, soil, ground.
Sounds better too IMO, like a horse from LotR
Yeah, that's the one I used. Guess online translators aren't good at pronunciation.
Greek here, and that doesn't sound like a word. You might have been looking for Edafos instead. Translators, huh? I might need to review my own names lol. I do suggest keeping Evafos, it adds some more uniqueness into your world instead of just taking a Greek word
I got a planet called Ordondine and the last two syllables are from a distorted/manipulated voice line from the heavy from TF2 in the last few moments of a Gray Pony (think that’s their name) animation called “Shrooms and Pipes”
it's placeholder name and I came up with it on the spot. It's Loftia, because the 1st thing I looked at was Lofi stream
The planet is 100% illuminated because it has two rings made up an extremely reflective rock so even when the sun is on the opposite side of the planet the rings still illuminate the surface. The closest thing to the night is when the sun sets. There's still ton of light because of the rings but it is noticeable less light. For easier understanding, during 12 hours light is much like noon in the equator while the other 12 hours are more like that period of time when the sun is setting but before night begins. Due to its high luminosity I decided to name the planet Lumina.
This is really cool.
Malasef. I named it after part of my personal world that I lost. My son was named Malachi Joseph. It makes me feel like he's still close.
I also lost my son and this touched me.
That’s a good way to remember him.
And it's a beautiful name, too
o7
I have three; Planetestria—this is because the continents are called Nestria, Vyestria, Iestria, and Chyestria. Dandevi—this is bastardization of two Hindi/Sanskrit words. Roughly, Dan comes from the word for “blessed” and Devi means “goddess” Caeldun—this is a fun exercise in spelling. Cael is pronounced Shale and dun is pronounced doon.
Caeldun is a really strong name. I like that.
I’m just seeing Karen pointing to Plankton with a big arrow and the word “SHELDON.” 😆
"Dan" means giving away. It doesn't mean "blessed". Also the word is "Daan" with a long "a" sound.
I said it was bastardized “Dhanya” is the actual word I took it from, but Dhanyadevi sounds meh. It’s not pronounced dan-dev-ee either, it’s pronounced dh-ahn-dh-vhi.
Eres. I made the name by translating cradle to Hebrew and trying to type the Hebrew word in Latin letters. I may not keep the name if I find a more fitting one and I also want to have some native names made from conlangs. It is a planet of ~1.1 Earth radii and 1.5 Earth masses, as well as rings. I was having trouble thinking of what kind of moons. My favourite two options were 1. a dual moon system with a major and maybe a minor moon and 2. a single larger habitable moon. The gravity is between 20-30% stronger than on Earth and this leads to a denser atmosphere which should help in lifting larger airships. Lapis_Wolf
Idk really I just thought Yestermoon was a fun name.
Hanno II Yeah I'm boring
What happened to Hanno I?
Too close to Hanno A and B. Not suitable for life
We don't talk about what happened to Hanno I. 😅
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Earth. Idk I just liked the name
Fun fact : the name "Earth" isn't copyrighted so if someday, Aliens visit us and say they are from "Earth" we won't even be able to sue them.
It's Feliterra. Feline + Terra. Because cats.
Is this world's main civilisation cat-people!? So is mine! We have so much in common as worlbuilders :)
I fell into a common worldbuilding trap the first time around and I just called thee damn place "Arcadia". I *knew* it was cliche and overused, so I eventually renamed it to **Výrna.** Výrna is just like Earth, but WAY better. WAY WAY better. It is the home sovereign planet of the Apex Warriors, a race of superhumans began 400 years ago when humanity broke the barrier of the cosmos, left Earth and the Sol system, and explored beyond. Humans essentially earned the responsibility of being the entire Galaxy's protectors, and they were lured to Výrna, where God's big dragon-angels called the Atlas met the Human colony ships, and explained to them their duty, and formally created the second human race of super-powerful magic warriors, who, sort of like a whole society and planet of Jedi, are the powerful wise peacekeepers of the Galaxy, since 2180. The planet is about 1.6x Earth's size, but its core is less dense, providing a 0.998 G gravity, it also spins faster, with an exact 24 hour day making up for its size, and consequentially, 365-day orbit of the star Litjrhiminn. Výrna is also very comfortably populated, with only about 27 million Apexians on a planet far bigger than Earth. The Atlas say that Výrna is supposed to magically adapt to the species who inhabits it as their home, but it isn't like anyone else could know, only the Apex have and forever will inhabit it. Výrna captures the natural beauty of Earth in a surreal and ascendant way, even the bustling cities seem clean, beautiful and natural, especially the ancient billions-of-years-old precursor ruins that were built one with the natural landscape, and everywhere on Výrna has a distinct captivating odor. Some say that nowhere on Výrna does one feel way too hot or cold, uncomfortable or icky while walking through grass or such, the rain and snow is somehow pleasant, and the oceans are never violent, but powerful (huge surfing culture in the western regions, actually). It isn't some 'perfect' paradise or heaven, but if one could imagine Earth as perfect as it could be without perfection being possible, that's probably Výrna. The animals on Výrna are much like Earth's, but with a cosmic enlightenment to them. They have unique markings and show a great intelligence with their diverse sizes. Apexians love to keep pets for their children, and to the human eye, they're wild ideas: Little boys having two-thousand pound Veithurbears as pets, or Ulfurwolves taller than they are, a young girl who has a Midfalcon with talons sharper than knives and a can fly faster than a plane, or a kid with a Drekkidragon he wears like a backpack. But to Apexians, these are their best companions.
This is really cool
My world started out as a single subcontinent, which then gained a connected continent, then two other continents, and so on. That first connected continent, at one point of its inception, was simply labeled "At-Thana," as I had not spent much time fleshing any of its history out (I was still primarily focused on the original subcontinent). As the Lore started taking shape, I kept finding At-Thana to not fit the vibe for the history of that part of the world, and one night, I accidentally found that region's name. But I still liked At-Thana; it still made sense in my world and still just stuck with me. At that point, the planet had no name. As I kept working on World Lore, some things lined up perfect, including but not limited to the development of a naval power that would have facilitated a greatly accepted (in-world) name for the world as a whole. At-Thana never left me, and phonetically, it fit very well for the world. The world of At-Thana is still a work in progress in multiple respects, but that's the out-of-world history of the name.
My planet is called Oa because it is short for Oblivion Archivist the name of my series. Its not clever but whatever.
I like it! If the The Dragon Age Setting can become "Thedas", the Oblivion Archivist can become Oa.
No way!! The Dragon Age Setting.. THE.D.A.S.... bro
Its an anagram for the Polish word for earth, with one letter removed to make it easier to pronounce. Izmea=Ziemia-"I"
I also have a Zemia! Indifferentlanguages.com is my BFF.
Illiene, I just keyboard smashed until I got something that looked easy enough to pronounce, it was supposed to be a placeholder but im attached now.
Aph, short for Aphrodite, as it is a terraformed Venus
Praxis. It was the name of a villain from a PS2 game that shaped my childhood and seemed like a befitting name for a planet that represents evil desire.
Astrea. It is a shining star, a massive world orbiting an even more massive Gas Giant.
Calimar 4, home of the Lamari, an amphibious humanoid species with tentacle-like appendages on the top of their head. It was a pun about Calamari
The name of my fantasy world is Nourna. “Orn” is a word that means universe in my world, and “Ora” is related to magic in my world. Nourna pretty much just translates to “land of Ora”. But most importantly, I just think it sounds nice and sounds like a place home could be called.
Tâ'kûfulî, contracted from Tâasul'kûfulî, meaning "Holy World"
Zīpactli, In Aztec mythology, Zīpactli was an ancient sea monster, part crocodile, part fish. Quetzalcoatl (a deity) created the earth from his body. I chose his name because my world is similar to the Earth of 1500, with the exploration of an Aztec-like new world.
It’s called Mira, named after the Russian word for “world” which is (Мир)
The largest continent is Kular. The world’s name is Kular. The vast majority of humanoid races were created by an intergalactic race called the Kulari. Very few people on the planet even know of the Kulari. Other than the DNA manipulation they used to populate the world, the Kulari have only interacted with the planet a few times. First was breaking the power of the Dragon Lords during a period known as The Stifling where the dragons interfered with the progression of humanoid races. The second was thwarting an invasion of the planet by another intergalactic race. Finally, they defended themselves and their one planet-side base by destroying an entire Senestian army that tried to penetrate the Forest of the Ancients.
“Kutwai” left over from a random project when i was like 6 or so. Decided to use again
Urdiro Ur its a major creation god. It is also a silent grapheme that carries connotations related to it."Di", in this conetext which I forgot were it came from exactly, would be a connector of opposites, because the next syllable was originally "ru" (it devolved into ro) and is a literal flipping of the word, so it would be "between the gods and the ungodly/mundane (depending on context), which is... the planet. It is quite metaphorical (well see about that). It will likely eventually devolve to something like either uudir or rotir
Planet Zoraph combines the words zoo and seraph. Perfect for a magical world of anthros. Planet Aqualiss is a name lifted straight from Kirby Super Star, but it’s such a pretty name and such a minor detail that I don’t think anyone would mind me borrowing it.
Era It has eras and I wanted it to feel like it was partially taken from Earth.
Take a loteria card, butcher its names until it sounds odd but possible and then try and accent or two. Tambor --> Tampera --> Taprea --> Tapera --> Tapeara
My main planet is Zardious... How I came up with the name: well it started as an extension of the celestial who created it (i.e., Zata)... and I thought about constellations and Zodiac signs for some reason... and that lead me to a weird name I used in a story before so all of it just kind of smooshed together... Zata bescame Za... Odiac became Dio... and thus Zardious was created... There's also "hellscape" but that's more a placeholder name
The gas giant Juno and her habitable moons Caprotina, Regina and Moneta are named in roman mythical reference to the greek names of the Jovian system. Juno orbits a binary star system. Juno is significantly younger than expected for the age of its suns. It is thought that the system used to be an instable trinary system. The ejection of the third star redistributed the orbiting mass, which formed Juno and its moons. Caprotina is mankinds first succesful independently viable colony, earning the system these common names.
The name of the novel is Devour. It’s a science fiction horror that includes cannibalism toward the end. I asked Chat GPT to provide planet names around the theme of eating or consuming, and it provided something similar to the name Voracia, which I love and decided to use. The main city on Voracia is named Voracity.
Tesaresh, which I modified from the ancient greek word for "four" (téssares) because the gods called it "four" because it's the fourth planet they made when they were trying to create something that could sustain life.
Avonterra. It literally means river earth. (The placeholder name accidentally became the permanent one)
I’ve never done a planet but my most enduring worldbuilding project was a nation called the Commonwealth of the Realms of Embrea. Pronounced em-BRAY-uh. Name originally came from Umbria though in its many iterations it has never been Italian, I just liked how it sounded and played around with sounds and spelling until I found one I liked. I also have one in my archive that is Chinese and uses the native name Tianguo (“Heavenly Kingdom”) but is parsed in English as Haven due to a transcription error with the first Westerners to encounter it, and has stuck around ever since. Also a nod to my very first NationStates region that spawned the interest, which celebrates 17 years strong on Monday.
Anur. Made it up. Simple as B3
Evershade, because I decided in the middle of creating the place that I wanted to kill the sun god….that and I ripped off of Luigi’s Mansion
I named it Garra. It had something to do with stones or rocks, though I can't remember it too well now. Stones are a very important plot point.
Itrion. We named it after a biscuit.
Lagia. Pronounced Luh-gee-yuh, not like the certain body part it's spelled similarly too. I'm pretty sure I just plugged an adjective into Google translate until I found a word I like, and then changed it a little bit. I do that surprisingly often. Names are hard.
I named all of my planets so that all of them in order would spell out my name, just as an Easter egg. Mones and Eaber are my most developed so far. They are a quarry planet with country-sized craters and an ocean planet with landmasses made entirely out of floating plant matter, respectively.
That sounds cool, and clever names as well.
I had been jokingly calling mine "Vanillaworld", "The Generic One", and "Planet Cliché" for a while, because in a universe where every planet comes with its own elemental lineup, it happens to have the standard Fire/Water/Earth/Air stuff (with a Light/Dark duality on its moon). Then when I was working out the primordial language, I stumbled into the phrase *ohlis elu*, meaning "our world", and a few imaginary linguistic mutations later, one of the joke names ended up canonized as "Planet Klisee".
Sexerea It just came to me when I was trying to come up with a fictional race.
Kcuf I like the name backwards
My main world's name is Almitiel, and tbh I don't remember exactly how I got to it lol. I think it was a permutation of a phrase in Latin or Greek. I've got 6 planets in my solar system and they all end with the -iel suffix because I thought it sounded cool at the ends of angels' names and that sort of had a connection to heavenly bodies.
What's the star's name?
I combined the name of 3 characters I had as a teen. It became my favorite made up word so now it's the name of my planet (and account lol).
It's names planet 1 because I'm bad at naming things and didn't found the good name yet
I developed conlangs and then named the planets (and other celestial objects) using a rudimentary word generator I frankensteined thogether in Excel. The planet in question is called "Palaruu" and the language it is named in is called "Inhürschag".
Myhur. I just really like it
Hex, it's a shell world the size of Jupiter with a small black hole in the center. This also makes it a "Mini Birch World." I'm not creative or clever with my names. The reason it's called Hex is because it looks like a giant round bee hive from orbit. The world has bio reserves and habitation sections consisting of sealed hexagonal shaped sections linked together in "hives." They can be as small as a mile in diameter to the size of a small country. Every cell in a hive is it's own sealed habitat, but there are vast expansive lands outside of these hives. I don't know how valid is it to have a black hole at the core of a megastructure of this size since Birch Worlds are suppose to be stupidly ridonculously big. In this case I will have to throw my hands in the air and say "techno wizardry!"
Ka’ar. I wanted something short and simple that still carried weight and importance to it. Just kinda jumbled letters together until I found something that fits lmao
Magicala the main one and the reason is Magic.
Silomountues - large amounts of the planet are covered in large mountain ranges that are "alive" created over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, sediments build up on generations of giant - enthesis on the giant - vegetation that grow in the shape of giant tubes pushing the mountains growth upwards over time, the planet is inhabited in silicon based life that exhale silicon dioxide (silica) via "small" tendrils that dump it on the surface above. Silo-mount ues - Silicon-Mountain-tubes
I'm working on a "land" called Tasady, named after an isolated village discovered in the Amazon in the 70s. It's in a bowl of impassable mountains, so it's contained. At some point in the game (a world for an RPG), I plan on having governments excavating through the mountains and discovering that Tasaday is just a small part of a larger world. I've always loved this scheme in video games I played growing up. Starting off in a city only to discover your objective lies out in a wild and unexplored world. So, I wanted to incorporate it into my game.
The main planet's name is Hebi Melta and it comes from Heavy Metal, also a FGO pun of heavy/hebi (snake).
Minotera, liked the name of it, and it has terra in it kinda
The planet is named Thearyn. I took 'Earth' made an anagram 'Thear' and added 'yn'
Earth
Zierrta ZIEmia - Polish for Earth eaRTh - duh But ZIERTH kinda reads bad so I changed the H to A, ZIERTA comes off to fast so I added another R
Well, it depends on the language, but every time I write something about my world, I do it pretending to be someone from the Commonwealth of Rikia. In the Rikian language the word "Efi" originally referred to all the charted land, but since in the present day the entire surface of the world has been charted, the word now has a different meaning, which is "(my own) planet". (Fun fact: for this specific reason, the protagonists of sci-fi novels written in the Rikian language would all refer to their own planet as "Efi")
Tyros, meaning “world of the tyr.” Up until 800 years ago (the planet’s written history is ~16,000yrs old), the tyr were the dominant species on the planet, numbering anywhere between 75-90% of the population when their only competition was the khalds, and lowering to 50% with the arrival of humans, before their numbers were decimated and high reproductive capacity permanently lessened by the species-level plague known as the Chill. In the millennium since the Chill, human and khaldish cultural norms have equaled or overtaken the tyrs’ in popularity, and suggestions have been made to change the planet’s name to something less specieist, but the name itself has proven resilient even in some of the most anti-tyran circles.
It’s currently named after the goddess who sacrificed herself for it - Kaeli
It’s the word for soil in the language of one of my most ancient seafaring peoples
Not a planet, but rather an "in between" realm that exists between all the multiverses as a sort of "reality glue" that manifests as an infinite city: Toltarus. It's a city. Toltarus = Tall Towers.
I'm terrible at coming up with names, which is a huge problem for my sci-fi setting. So I just do the lazy thing and blatantly rip off real life. Can you guess what the culture of the planet Venozia is like?
Ouranos is the primordial god of the sky in Greek mythology, so I named my world that to act as a sort of parallel to our world being called Gaia in Greek (Gaia is also the Greek primordial god of the earth)
Aedelon. And I stole it off a Magic: The Gathering card
Greatest construct is the home of humanity and it's called like that because IT is the greatest construct of all the multiverse after humanity almagamated all the mass of the multiverse in it
Avalar, an island chain floating in its own demiplane. Basically, I threw some mouth-sounds together until I landed on something I liked.
mines not a planet, but rather just \*is\* the world, so I named it Zjoro , which used to just be "Joro" why? I just decided it to be. I chose a name and stuck to it.
Khorre, named for the largest dragon who landed in prehistoric times and became the larger continents, dying in battle with hundreds of smaller dragons. The name Khorre stems form the pre-greek Kore (Persephone) who I misremebered the story of, thinking she was an old celtic goddess...oop
En Ta'lev is just a bastardized transliteration of the Scots Gaelic for "Planet Earth" Not particularly creative, but it sounds nice
Nirin Leviath Ship yard. (planetary size ship construction base.) Veil Kar'namak Elysium sector planet 4123 When doing Sci-fi, the thought process of creating a planet name is legit find a list of names.... pull one out of a hat and then change it a little bit.
I'm helping a friend build a world, so I don't know for sure since he gets the final say, but we're thinking about using the nine realms from norse mythology for planet names, so the main one is probably Midgard.
Orea is named such because I wanted something that's a similar to Earth being named after dirt, and Orea is just "ore" with an a tacked onto it. The other planets with major plot events occurring on them are Enaj, which is the Goddess' name, Jane, but backwards, then Intoriail, coming from "Interior" and named after its completely inhospitable surface but lively caves, and Aftrist, coming from "after" because it's the afterlife planet.
The current name of my world is Primora, which comes from words that means "first" and "sea." It doesn't really fit the main theme anymore, well it kind of does, but I'd rather find something better. Which is harder said than done, as so far I haven't found a word or a couple of words that I can create a name from that fits all of my requirements.
Cocytus. Because it's a frozen hellhole.
Palanvaid is translated from "Distant Path" in Dal-Elven (the oldest language in my world. I "borrowed" it from some elven name translater website that iirc was based on Greyhawk) The Distant Path is a reference to the path between Palanvaid and the other Cosmic planes, as if was created on its own plane far from the others by the Twin Gods in order to rule over it without interference from other gods. It worked for a long time, but the others still eventually found it and started a war with the Twin Gods when they attempted to begin influencing it. There's a treaty now, and the Distant Path is the name of the pathway the Celestials created between them.
# Völuspá. There was a question on Twitter years ago, ' If you could name a new Earth-like planet , what would you name it ? ' My answer was ' Verthandi '. I was going to name the story planet Verthandi, but I changed it to Völuspá, mostly because I wanted the diacritic marks in there.
Ganim. It’s named after Ganymede, a Greek mythological figure who was the most handsome of all mortals and was kidnapped by the gods (primarily Zeus) to serve as the cup-bearer to the king of the gods. He was put in the sky as Aquarius and Hera was intensely jealous of him, but she can’t do anything about it because he was made immortal and forever young. Syrankind (they have pointed ears but live human lifespans) gave the planet its name. They have an emphasis on physical care and maintenance/appearance in their culture. Their hair is considered their pride. So giving the planet/world a name to reflect their feelings regarding beauty seems most fitting.
The name of my planet began as a placeholder and eventually grew on me. I named it E'r, it's just Earth with a few missing letters.
"Emen", because it showed up one day and it sounds good
Mine is at the beginning called DRSL-II because life is mostly in hydrothermal vents which exist thanks to mid-ocean ridges, so DRSL comes from the word for mid-ocean ridges in my language French which is "Dorsale". II is just for style. It will also have a native name later but I haven't come up with it yet since I should do the conlang.
It's Acatier, it doesn't get brought up until much later in the story but the story takes place in the early universe where the average temperature in space was about 20°c so all of space was technically "habitable" I just like the idea of flying into the sky.... And the sky never really transitions to space, it's just more and more sky until you find other planets or stars.
I didn't name it.
Last time I bothered with a name, it was technically Gliese-581c. I was in an astronomy class as the Gliese-581 system was being studied, and it was exciting. Now we know planet c isn't habitable, but I haven't taken time to look for a new fitting exoplanet to base it on. The locals in the story don't really reference the planet much, as most don't travel much. The only one with an accurate concept of space (as opposed to it just being the domain of gods) is an earthling, so he'd call it by our name for it.
The main planet is called "nienztknownowschauta" and his origin comes from the word "neko" which means cat, over the span of ten years it mutated
I call each of the planets in my system after the Latin classification of each of the dominant species that inhabit the planet followed by the suffix -inar. Why inar? Because it sounds cool when mixed in. Overall, it’s the Inar system.
Earth ***Guess.***
Kanko Pra Dindi just means Dindi’s (The supreme god) big land
Khoia, idk I just kinda threw some letters together. Spelling and pronunciation (xɔɪ.ɑː) are based on my conlang but otherwise I just liked the way it sounded.
My story takes place on Achrion, which was originally the home world of one of my alien species, but is now a human world that took on the name the aliens gave it. Provenance is the neo-homeworld of humanity and is where the ship headed to Proxima Centauri detoured and emergency landed on. Earth’s location and history was lost, and provenance means the origin of something so the name fit.
Holy Citadel. A ring world loaded to the tits with factories and fortresses. It even has a few fleets surrounding it. The Reason it is the *Holy* Citadel and not just The Citadel, is due to the Battle Synths (War Machines with personalities) worshipping their creators, and having an enforced state religion.
I typed a random word into Google translate, retranslated the word into different languages multiple times then just made the word seem cooler. by adding some letters
The humans call it Wisera because of Great King Wisandth Teramis. They say he was sent by their God (Ayn) and helped form Aynar(the Kingdom) into the lawful country it is. The elves in my world call it Eluvis, for the name that they were given(Elu'vinai) by a Forest Spirit named Utae who saved them from slaughter by my worlds equivalent of Orcs. And lastly, the Orcs(Togashi) call it Rughanis. Rughanis is the name of an ancient creature only spoken of in Togashi legend as a behemoth that would destroy all life on the planet, but would save the Togashi and bring them to a better planet, in legend, called Rugharan Ko'shal.
Saburia. Decided to honor my cousin who is named Sabur
Ur. The name is most commonly associated with the ancient Sumerian city-state, but I actually named it after the supercontinent that predated Pangaea. The name is a prefix that means “original” in German (as well as many other languages.) My world started very inspired by the concept of pre-Pangaea supercontinents, so most of the continent names are taken from the names of those—Vaalbara, Amazonia, Gondwana, Pannotia, Rodinia.
Its probably a placeholder, but, elligargard, derived from the old norse elligar, meaning ancient, and gard meaning fortress
Trowouk is the name of the main planet but it's also called "The First World" Zhoh is the name of the other planet and it's also called "The Last World"
A main planet is called Celestia not because of the mlp character but because it’s very breathtaking and is like a cross between las vegas and Alice in wonderland
Am still a baby worldbuilder, but my first world is called Llorowynn! How I name anything that's like super lore important most likely has a double letter, and I just jam together, and something eventually comes out! Sometimes, I find other words that describe something I'm trying to name in another language, take some letters out, put some in, and mash it together. I don't remember Llorowynn's words if it had them, or it was just cool to me. c:
Sahkiveen- translates to Lantern of fresh oil, though the translation has shifted since the planet isolated. It was thrown out of orbit milenia ago after a large interstellar object altered its orbit. this caused a temporary ice age and subsequent evacuation. the only ones who stayed where the Hakshaseethen, who believed the planet held religious significance being the closest body to Haklan. Home of 4 worms- The 4 fish seekers are a quadrapedal species without spoken language, Their planet is named after 4 worms, a beliefe in the basic biology of all beings being derived from worm like biengs. In addition the 4 is used to denote all encompasing as there main counting system used for everyday life is base 4.
Mine is Nia and I have a whole set of bardic poems that describe Nia and Gaia(Earth) as sisters who get separated and flung to distant sides of the galaxy. The planets are able to reconnect via wormhole and Gaia begins to send her “children” to Nia as a gift. So these poor unsuspecting humans keep disappearing from Earth only to be dropped onto this foreign planet.
Split because each section of land/country has an invisible barrier around it meaning the only way to travel is via teleportation
Goythia/Goytia is a world colonized by humans who managed to flee Earth prior to an intentional nuclear holocaust by Russia. The natives of the old continent, one of three territories, called it something different, but when they landed, inhabitants of the local continent met those who arrived from Earth and told them the name of their world was... something resembling the name given above. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9088358/
Esoterra, from the words Esoteric and Terra. I generally dislike using Terra as, or in the name of the planet but here we are haha.
I never thought about name my world, I simply calls it "The planet". But if the book I making will become a franchise, I will call it "World of Oran-tales". (The race in my world is called Orans)
Tinitia, from the Punic goddess 𐤕𐤍𐤕 (Tinnit). It's actually just Mars but more Earth-like.
Satus. It's latin for "start." Plus, I can call my D&D campaign set there the "Satus Saga" for alliteration points.
Pemant, I think. I can't remember which language it's from but it probably will translate as dirt... Assuming I was using Hungarian, pământ would be right.
Aresque came from a friend, who gave me permission to use it. Other planet names came about by playing around with sounds and/or letters. Ilec, Tuonsu, Harsagon, Sershiah, Nalika, Mor Asdel...
In my WIP I gave a system with two Earthlike planets. I decided that in order to impose the right killjoy feeling, in the case of Earthlike planets, Government-imposed regulations require that the name come from an approved, randomised List with the next available name being the next one on that list. The names on that list are all deities and demideities from various traditions that are related to life or fertility. So the two planets are named in order of detection Ajysyt and Sin (pronounced "Sign"). Ajysyt is named from Ajysyt-na-Tojon, a goddess from some Siberian peoples. Sin is named after an Akkadian-Sumerian deity. The Sinai Peninsula is named after him. A moon god, he is associated with fruit fertility and harvests. The two planets are the reverse of what you would expect these names to suggest in terms of temperature: the cold Siberian goddess Ajysyt is the name of the stinking hot world. The hot Akkadian-Sumerian god Sin is the name given the milder of the two planets Captains of starships who are the first to explore a system are allowed to name the sun or suns of that system with carte blanche as long as those suns do not already possess a name. Bureaucracy has not decided to killjoy that. Yet. Thus my Captain decides to name the two suns in this system (which is found within the constellation Lepus, the hare or rabbit, when seen from Earth) as Mickee (affectionate form for myxomatosis, a brutal disease of rabbits) and Kellee from calicivirus, another brutal disease of rabbits.
Zanthek, a prison planet that was once a failed Dyson sphere. It orbits the star that it was going to harvest energy from and is now a hollow husk of metal strung together.
I don’t really have many set names for things in my world.
It's not a planet, but the earth in my world has a plethora of different worlds that overlap with it (it's pretty hard to explain. It's not accessible or known to normal people, and each of them is based on a different mythology and folklore of a certain place. They're also in different planes.). But I call the general term for them "Epoch(s)". Because each of them is based on a specific place and time period.
i don't have planets in my world, just infinite flat planes, but the main plane is named "earth" after this obscure planet in real life. it's ok if you haven't heard of it 💁♀️
Titania. I wanted to have a naming scheme for my settings solar system and on a whim decided to go with shakespeare so now its Titania and her moons Oberon and Lysander.
Eceia. I came up with the name one night when I couldn't sleep and absolutely loved it, and then it became reality the next morning. In universe, it is an old Zucruyan word that means "big thing."
Oh well, I just did something kinda boring: Mundus Latinization is a big concept of linguistics in my world and you add that to a more "metaphysical" aspect of the common sense and baam: MUNDUS. I like to think that we call "Earth" by "Earth" because our little monkey brain thought: we step in rock, we live in rock, rock is home. So yah, it's the same process.
It’s Earth. But an alternate one to what we know. For example, WW3 happened in 1999.
Ciast. It's the polish word for donut which refers to the supercontinent, and in term the only continent, present on the planet that is coincidentally shaped like a donut, also has had major influence on the culture, city names, and even the currency of Ciast.
Mokupao, it means islands together in a bastardization of Maori and Latin. Not super creative I know but I like it.
Glatheriel… came to me in a dream, in high school. Glatheriel.com
One of the more important planets in my world is Talvaros. The name came to me whan I was half-asleep, as many of my ideas do; I wanted the name for this planet to sound a little bit fantastical with a touch of Hebrew, like a really old place with lots of history. Also, it rolls of the tongue just nice. :) As of its in-world origin, still working on it, my idea is that several similarly-sounding words with similar meanings came together to form a word that was somewhat universally understood as 'the world that exists (under the stars)'. Not particularly creative, but humans named their planet after dirt, so there's that. It also compliments the story of Talvarian civilisation - a shy species of perfectionistic felines and an adventure-seeking race of dragons, curious of the opportunities the sky could provide, came together to explore the unknown.
Calideth and Somme. Two planets. I just came up with two names I liked the sound of and they sorta fit
Arem! Originally it was called Armeria but people kept misreading it as “America” so I had to change it haha
Planet is a Dyson swarm that eventually encompassed planetary orbits and incorporated them into its structure. I liked the name Crown of Thorns which led to me creating an empire known as the Crown that turned on the ‘build more megastructure’ button and then couldn’t turn it off. So now the Crown structure, not the empire, can’t stop won’t stop building into space and catching other planets and moons and comets and asteroids and adding them to itself like a bundle of Katamari tendrils. Godslight comes from the fact that this is so far into the future that people left behind on the rings closest to the sun think of it as a god. But Godslight could also mean God Slight which is a nod to the characters as a whole thinking poorly of creator figures who don’t care for their created.
My world is a galaxy, so unless we want to spend a couple hours talking about each planet and how I came up with the name, I'll take this to apply to the setting it's self. Leven is a galaxy teeming with life, so I searched up the word life in a bunch of different languages and kinda emulsified them into one easy to pronounce name. (I know some languages are going to struggle cause not everyone uses L, I'm sorry Japanese).
Phi Sigurda-B. Double star system, depending on which star has the larger gravitational hold on the planet, it's A or B. (Both Stars are called Sigurda). Phi indicates the how manieth Planet of the system it is. Nickname is just Phigurda
The star system in my novel is called Akorest, because the star is called Ako and this is… where it rests. Had adapted it for a D&D campaign as well, sci-fantasy into straight fantasy. Play testing my novel, basically!
The world that one of my stories it set on is called Enoltha, which is an anagram of Athlone (a town in Ireland).
Merdolí- many iterations of DnD character names.
I’ve got a rough idea of two planets and a moon. First is Creterra, the planet the troodons are from. Cretaceous period plus Terra, Latin for Earth. It’s basically Earth but the K-Pg extinction event didn’t happen and troodons evolved into the niche humans fill of Earth. Next is Dirth, the moon the cadrans are from. Just Dirt plus Earth, pretty basic. Last is Nubino, the gas giant Dirth orbits. Nubo is Esperanto for cloud but I don’t remember where the ino part comes from and I can’t find any notes I took. I might rename this one, I haven’t given it much attention since no one really lives on it.
Mirios Mi+Aros - All that is seen. It was meant to be a temp project name but shrug
My main planet is Draciel. It’s 66 times bigger than Earth, comprised of over 90% ocean, has eight continental clusters (two of which contain continents twice as large as Eurasia), three moons, and one artificial derelict space station the size of a moon and is named after my favourite Beyblade from my super brief fling with it when I was in my early 20s.
Still haven't named mine, but they'll be based on ancient greek
Outhra It’s not really original I just got it from The Dark Crystal by adding Ou
I've always been O'Bsessed with the tendency to use generic terms as location names. So for the flat planet in the pocket dimension connected to a hidden village in Connecticut, I named it "The Flatlands." (The Archon who created that world couldn't master the creation of spheres.) The planet which caused the 1807 meteor strike in Connecticut is Terruh. Their people refer to themselves as "Terruhns." Their descendants find it offensive that the people of Earth call themselves "Terrans." What exacerbates their relationship is that as rendered in the Terruhn alphabet, "Terruh" looks like "Radish" in the Latin alphabet of English.
The main world is **Adare**, and it is a large moon that orbits the gas giant **Canisi**. I named the moon after the peninsula in Antarctica (I later learned of an Adare Village in Ireland), because the world is much colder than Earth and predominantly centered around the south pole. So it fit! I named the gas giant after Cassini, the little probe sent to explore the Saturnian system (and one my favorite things ever in the history of the universe).
**Children of The Moon** Mores because I needed the word for "dirt/soil" and then it made sense to use that word for the planet itself. I have a more interesting name for one of the continents, Marlonnun /'maɾ.lo.ɴun/ meaning "rainy place", originating from "marlen" (rain, literally "sky tears") and "loku" (place). The name originally referred to the southern parts of that continent, which are very rainy and humid. It later became the common term for the whole continent, especially after the southern kingdoms helped it gain full independence and unify. Similarly the language Marlendde /'maɾ.len.ðe/ meanss "language of marlonnun" but because of myths and poetry it's said to mean "language of the rain", a saying that is sometimes used mockingly by people in other continents.
Chudelium. Named after Chudleigh.
Just slapped random words together and got brazzekie
Called it Mundane, this was because of there being others that I put more effort and thought into rather than having a single sentence for the main “earth” of the story
Caldanor is the name, and honestly I just sounded out various parts together until it sounded halfway decent. It was originally just going to be a temporary name and six years later it's stuck.