I like the Place names...

From: rmeints <RMEINTS_at_ford.com>
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 1999 12:24:09 +0000


Martin Crim hates the silly place names...

I don't. Mostly because I don't feel they are silly. I like the fact that many of the creators of Glorantha and RQ have been immortalized with a place name, like (Clint) Bigglestone, Tourney Altar (Art and Ray Turney), (Anders) Swenston, (Tadashi Ehara) Tada's High Tumulus, (William Church) Wilm's Church, etc.

But Martin says the people in the world of Glorantha don't know how they got their names...

Well, I don't know how Orgasm Pennsylvania and Climax Michigan got their names either, but life goes on. Regardless, there's no reason why we, the potential writers of new Gloranthan stuff, can't flesh out a little history that justifies the names. Tada's High Tumulus has a legit name anyway, but there's no reason that Swenstown wasn't founded by the 1st age hero Swen or the clan known as the Swens. Maybe it's a corruption of the word Swan, and there used to be a lake with mythic swans nearby, devoured by Chaos or Trolls during the Great Darkness. Perhaps Corflu is the Jrusteli word for "river mouth" or a derivative of confluence. Bigglestone could have started out as Bogglestone, which was a Golden plaything put there by the Boggles to irritate everyone. Cam's Well, probably thus named in honor of Greg's son, Cam, was given a real history and write-up in one of the Praxian themed issues of Tales. It works just fine, despite what Martin would call its dubious and silly origins.

WHAT I RECOMMEND AS A SOLUTION...
Take the silly names as a challenge to think up a plausable history. I much prefer that to having to redo the maps and learn a whole new set of place names. If that violates your need to have everything make linguistic and cultural sense, sorry.

Now all I have to do is travel to Bad Axe, Michigan and find out why an axe went bad, and why it was memorable...


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