City Name Generator
Build the great cities of your world, one name at a time.
About City Names
A city's name is its oldest surviving monument. Long after walls crumble and dynasties fall, the name endures. Real-world city names reveal layers of history: Istanbul was Constantinople was Byzantium, each name marking a different era. London may derive from a pre-Celtic word whose meaning is lost. Paris comes from the Parisii tribe. Tokyo means 'eastern capital.' The best fantasy city names carry this same sense of accumulated history, even when created from scratch.
City names form through predictable linguistic patterns that you can reverse-engineer for your fiction. Many cities are named for their geography: Oxford (a ford for oxen), Pittsburgh (Pitt's fortress), Cape Town (a town on the cape). Others honor founders or rulers: Alexandria, Constantinople, Washington. Some describe a function: Market Harborough, Salt Lake City, Bridgewater. And some have evolved so far from their origins that only linguists can decode them.
For fantasy world-building, the most effective city names combine a familiar linguistic root with a fantasy element. 'Dragonport' is instantly legible: it is a port city associated with dragons. 'Thal'veren' is more mysterious but still phonetically pleasing. The trick is matching the name's opacity to the city's role in your story -- important cities need memorable, pronounceable names, while distant cities can afford to be more exotic and opaque.