City Name Inspirations

[UnityScoutChopper]

Never rename unless the list runs out, or I really want to remind myself of some attribute of the city (e.g. "Bison" recently for my fantastic Iroquois cattle town), or I'm feeling bored/creative.

USC

[bvoncranium]

In one PBEM game I decided to name my cities after Elvis Costello albums, thinking that there were so many of them I'd never run out. As it turned out there weren't nearly enough, as I ended up with about 80 cities I guess there aren't too many recording artists who have done that many...
-bvc

[Rasputin]

i always rename, no point playing a god like game if the people get to choose their own city names....


For themes , someitimes , i will name each city after girl names doing it alphabetically. eg Amanda, Betty, Catherine, Debby etc,

Or naming all the citys on the same land mass with same starting letter.

Once i just game them all code numbers and letters like W-1 . W-2 etc prety boring but easy to know where each city is

Mostly i start with capital named after me, then 2nd city after my latest girlfreind, and then my kids, then our midlle names. then i sort of clutch at straws and name the rest of my citys after people i know.

Sometimes i also use the geograhpy as well like others eg. Whale city, Fish Town, Cowville. etc

[bodiki]

Okay I have to admit I had a couple of fav's that Iwould use in CIV II but are not able to do so in CIV III. I used to like to develop the territory around a mountain with 8 settlers/engineers and then build a city with pop 8 on top of a mountain and I would call the 1st one Eagle's Roost and the Next the Boar's Den. Kinda always fascinated by Hitlers mountain top retreat/headquaters, even tho' the guy was a nut job.

Edited to correct some spelling; prob missed some as well

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by 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

I tend to either take cues from geography or resources, or (especially when on multiple landmasses) divide my holdings into regions, and give all the cities in a given region geographically-related names. For instance, in one game I named all the cities on the home island after towns in New Jersey; the other islands got cities from Florida, Texas, California, and Canada.

[Paddy]

Originally posted by bodiki
Okay I have to admit I had a couple of fav's that Iwould use in CIV II but are not able to do so in CIV III. I used to like to develop the territory around a mountain with 8 settlers/engineers and then build a city with pop 8 on top of a mountain and I would call the 1st one Eagle's Roost and the Next the Boar's Den. Kinda always fascinated by Hitlers mountain top retreat/headquaters, even tho' the guy was a nut job.

Edited to correct some spelling; prob missed some as well

Yes mountaintop cities have a special aura to them...

I have recently come across a new way of referencing my cities...

0401250903PTS1 and so on...

[Kuciwalker]

Renaming cities is too much work, generally. Though in the Middle Ages conquest as the Byzantines I named a new city Sparta.

[needle]

Next game I'm going to change the title from "King" (or whatever) to "Dude".

"Dude, there are barbarian tribes near Amsterdam."

...and lets not forget "We love the dude" day.

[Hagbart]

I like the default city names too. Hardly ever renames.

[Rasputin]

got to rename to have overall control

[joncha]

Originally posted by needle
Next game I'm going to change the title from "King" (or whatever) to "Dude".

"Dude, there are barbarian tribes near Amsterdam."

...and lets not forget "We love the dude" day.

Hehe... now we just need a "Big Lebowski" leaderhead!

Actually, I am much more likely to rename my civ, leader, titles, etc. than I am to rename cities. When I play as the Iroquois, for example, I always rename them the Haudenosaunee.

jon.

[G'Kar]

I like renaming the cities but also the civ and its leader. Last time I played as Burkina Faso and my capitol was, of course, Ouagadougou.

But much of the time I simply modify the defaul names based on geography and resources/lux; Leeds Forest, Paris Mountain, New York Beach. I also like saluting my favorite celebrities with names like Ville de Courteney Cox.

I'm also planning to use the names of my favorite drinks; Mountain Dew would be a great capitol name I think.

[joncha]

I guess happiness wasn't really a factor for you, given that Burkina Faso means (by one translation, anyway) "Land of Happy People."

jon.

[Switch]

Originally posted by joncha


Hehe... now we just need a "Big Lebowski" leaderhead!

Actually, I am much more likely to rename my civ, leader, titles, etc. than I am to rename cities. When I play as the Iroquois, for example, I always rename them the Haudenosaunee.

jon.

Hehe, great book. If you liked it, check out the mod based on it. If you like that, I'm currently working to update it to C3C...any feedback is welcome. (The Years of Rice and Salt, btw, is the book I'm referring to).

*ahem* end plug, begin on topic.

Me, I don't rename civs or cities, though once I find a list that I like I'm going to update the city lists to be more thorough.

[joncha]

Actually, Iroquois (Irinakhoiw) is a pejorative name given them by the Algonquin, meaning "rattlesnakes." Haudenosaunee is the name they give themselves (as a group, the individual nations have their own names). It means something like "People of the Long House."

Kim Stanley Robison was just doing good research (as well as displaying some cultural sensitivity) when he used Haudenosaunee instead of Iroquois in the novel. When I saw it in his book--which is, I agree, a great book--I was pleasantly surprised.

jon.