City Name Inspirations

[ShadowPresident]

I know that hardcore players like ourselves don't bother with the "default" city names the game gives you when you build a new city. Just wondering what my fellow players draw on for city names.
I have used customer names (most of them are dept. stores whose names translate well into city names like McRaes, Carson, Bonton, etc.), cities I have lived in (from Barsinghausen, Germany to Charlotte, NC, USA), Nevada cities (Sparks, Reno, Las Vegas, Battle Mountain) and Vegas hotels (Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Mirage and Luxor unless the Egyptians already built Luxor). I also use names of people I know and city-ize them (my capital is ALWAYS Stephanopolis after ME)

[Rhothaerill]

I don't usually rename any cities when playing SP game. I only rename in PBEMs and democracy games. In PBEMs I will name cities with names I created in my D&D gaming days. In my Balderdash PBEM though I'm planning on naming cities to insult the other players (it's a special theme PBEM )

[Alex]

usually i don't rename cities. but i'd do it if i did PBEM.

[Kuciwalker]

I never bother to rename cities.

[Chaos_BF1942]

I sometimes rename cities.

I do remember in Civ 2 using a Spy to investigate an enemy city, and it can let you rename the city.

[joncha]

I will sometimes, usually its renaming captured cities to better reflect my empire... latinizing city names if I'm playing as the Romans, etc. Other than that, I tend to just keep the original names. Although, I have named "canal" cities Panama City before, and once I added "Impia" to the name of one of my Roman cities that culture-flipped and then subsequently "liberated."

jon.

[molly bloom]

I use any and all inspirations- abandoned historical sites, names of heroes, scientists, artists, battlegrounds.

[Flip McWho]

I stick with the default city names. Can't be bothered to change them. Besides I would run out of names to fast, there is only so many derivatives of Flip in the world

[Mountain Sage]

For each game, the capital's name is changed into one of my daughters'. The second city gets my second daughter's name. The next game, the two names are reversed.
This avoids comments like 'My city is bigger than yours", 'I have more wonders than you' or 'If she gets an aqueduct, I also want one asap'.

I tried once to give my wife's name to a newly conquered city, but then I heard one of my daughters tel my wife "You know, papa does not love you anymore. First he conquered you, then he got fed up and disbanded you'.
I'm still paying for it

[[Shane Hodgson]]

Because I know a lot about language, I can make up pretty accurate names. I only do this when the default names run out...when it starts making New Baghdad, Baghdad 2, and such. For example: with the Mayans, I came up with Xtepelontopec and Xtopotelequetzl. If I capture a city, like the Arabic Mecca, I transform it to fit with my Civ, to something like Mechtalochitlan.

[steven8r]

I will sometimes use the default city names, but mostly I give the city whatever name currently comes to mind. Generally the Capital is the ever original, 'Capital', or 'Capital City'. I've also named resource grabbing cities things like, 'Snake the Silks' or 'Rubber Robber' or something to that effect.

I once captured a city and it later flipped back to the original owner, so I took it again, razed it and brought in a Settler and founded a city on the same site named, 'Ashes of [previouscityname]'

Generally my names are inspired by geographic/resource features like 'Hillville' or 'Iron Mountain', 'Tundra Town', etc.

I find that naming my own cities helps me remember where they are on the map. Once I get past a certain number of cities, I soon get confused w/ the default names.

Steven

[Alex]

Originally posted by Mountain Sage
I tried once to give my wife's name to a newly conquered city, but then I heard one of my daughters tel my wife "You know, papa does not love you anymore. First he conquered you, then he got fed up and disbanded you'.
I'm still paying for it

[bongo]

Never rename anything in SP. PBEM and demogames OTOH....

In PTWDG2 we have long given up the use of city names in our private forum, we only refer to them by numbers...makes sense as we rename them every second turn.

In a current PBEM I named one city 'St Owen By the River' to thank OPD for taking care of my game while I were honeymooning. We also renamed ALL cities in the 'F11' screen when one of the players had a birthday. I think he liked that

[Sarxis]

Same here. SP, I just couldn't be bothered with the time it takes to change one. But in MP, sometimes I will.

[eris]

I have used various themes and techniques. The most braindead was "aaa", "bbb", "ccc". etc. The idea was to be able to easily identify what order I had built the cities. Playing with one of the young ones in the household and trying to capture young attention, I mixed in their name into city names, adding suffixes like "burg", "opolis", "ville" etc. That got challenging. Ended up using geography names as well at the young one's suggestion. "Eastport", "Northport", "Ironmount", etc.

The one I enjoyed best was based on negatives. The capital was "nowhere", then "not here", "not there", moving to things like "nope", "nada", "nyet" and ending up with things like "somewhere else", "over there", and other such constructions. The kiddo thought I was crazy. I had also renamed myself and my tribe so that I was "nobody" of the tribe "nothing". What was really enjoyable was the various text messages in dialogue boxes. "The pyramids were built in somewhere else." "The people in nowhere are happy" "Greetings, nobody of the nothing!" and on and on."

Then again, I am notoriously easily amused.