I've decided to ill-advisedly jump into the murky waters of naming things, wrongly thinking that I can explain at least one mind-set that might lead to what Martin expresses as his philosophy on naming things (just thought I'd coin the term 'Gloranthanomicon' while I'm at it).
There are people who, when role-playing, like to have things that happen in the game happen only for reasons that would be understandable by characters in the game. These people tend to be ill at ease with having a spell fail because having it succeed would 'ruin the story', since as far as the characters are concerned, that's daft. You might think that you can do things like that and your players won't notice, but you're probably underestimating your players' intelligence, and there's nothing that can ruin a campaign faster than mistrust. Now, if your players don't mind the GM making rulings based on the quality of the story, that's fine, but there are players that hate that sort of thing.
One of the reasons that some players hate that sort of thing is that they try to assume the mantle of their character, and anything that would jar the character's sense of 'reality' (clearly in-game reality) makes it difficult for them to maintain that state of mind. Since that state of mind is integral to their fun, that's a bad thing. Others play more with teh view of an author of a shared story, or perhaps are better able to stay 'in character' in the face of what would be seen in the world as inexplicable (within the game-world) happenings. But some players do have these concerns.
These players are the ones who really, really *hate* joke names in the world. It disrupts their suspension of disbelief, knocks them out of character and spoils the fun. These are the same folks who generally have little patience for Malkioni Brownshirts; silliness based on exGloranthan references destroys their fun. Swenstown should be named Swenstown for a reason understandable to a resident of Swenstown. This isn't a call for linguistic purity; surely the Sartarite word for 'town' isn't identical to the English word for 'town', and a name translation (similar to Parisians calling the United States L'Etats Unis (or whatever)) is fine; preferable, actually, since it preserves flavor.
You might say that that there was a chap named Swen who was important to this town early in its history; that might even become (contradiction in terms alert) Official Gloranthan Canon. However, that is just a rationalization, not a reason, and someone who knows the *real* reason for the town's naming won't be fooled. Just as one could say, 'well, that spell very well might have failed anyway.' That isn't the reason, it's a rationalization, and players are usually smart enough to catch on.
So, having places named for out-of-game-world reasons is detrimental to the fun of players who like their world to be self-consistent and self-contained. I don't think it's unreasonable to try to make Glorantha as accesible to and enjoyable by as many types of role-players as is feasible.
George W. Harris gharris_at_mindspring.com ------------------------------
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