Complete Guide to City Name Generator: From Fantasy to Post-Apocalyptic

Whether you are playing casual City-Building games, drafting a novel, or formulating a perfect world for your next tabletop or video game, city naming will be an integral step that you will need to do later on. Similar to our real world, city names are used to identify a larger town situated in a specific location in a province or state. There are a wide variety of options and naming conventions that we can use to name a city. In creating a city name for a fantasy world or renaming cities from a video game, it is always a good idea to know the meaning behind the name.

In this article, you’ll get to know some of the types of city name generators available online. Not only that, you’ll get to grasp the importance of city naming both in games and literature after reading this article.

  • Infinite Elixir
  • Enchanted Conclave
  • Cosmic Architects Society
  • Celestial Echoes
  • Enlightened Paradigm Society
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Importance of City Names in Games, Stories, and Films

Put yourself in the position of a “creator” or a mayor that is developing a piece of land until it booms into a prosperous town. Your precious town soon beams with the smiles of happy citizens, tall buildings, and thriving businesses. What else could make this place well-remembered in the annals of history?—a good City name!

City names are used to identify specific pieces of land and its surroundings. People can easily determine and differentiate one place from the other. Additionally, the name of a city represents its inhabitants, encompassing their norms, behavior, and etiquette.

In city-building games, city names are used to identify divisions of a region. Players can freely rename a city based on their standards or whims. Some more advanced and technical players tend to rename their cities based on the region’s main resources. The reason for this is to easily manage their resources and to juggle between the production of the cities as needed. Some city-building games are more casual, like Sim City 4, where players can solely focus on a single city regardless of its resource. But as the region becomes bigger, the city name will play an important role in easily remembering where you left off or what city requires further development or attention.

City Names are also important for Open-World Role Playing Games (Open-World RPGs). In an Open world game, players will need to venture into a huge chunk of a virtual world to approach objectives, meet people, and progress into the story. Game developers take time in providing unique and memorable city names inside the open world so that players can easily remember and identify their next destination in the game. Just imagine a world where there is no name for each city you visit. It will make your adventure complicated and worse, unplayable.

Storytelling, on the other hand, are a forte for novel authors and scriptwriters. Writers will have to visually describe cities through words and provide city names for each. By naming cities, authors can freely create city scenarios that are imaginatively appealing and appreciative in the mind of the reader. Not only that, by giving names to cities or other locations, authors can easily traverse the story from one area to the other by simply shifting where the events are happening. 

The same is true with films and movies. The most common city name that is included in most American movies is New York City, especially in superhero movies like Superman and Spiderman. City names are also a common setting of events happening in a series or film. A few examples are Gotham City (Batman), El Dorado (City of Gold), Atlantis (The Lost City), City of Troy (Troy), and Ba Sing Se (Avatar: The Last Air Bender).

city name generator

Different Types of City Name Generators

Thankfully, there is a way to make city name creation easy and convenient—through City Name Generators. A City Name Generator is a tool used to generate random fantasy city names. It can be used to produce unique names that users can apply to their fantasy world for free. It can also serve as a suggestion tool to further enhance city name ideas in cases where the user wants a self-made name instead. 

Simple browsing over the internet will take you to a variety of city name generators available. But what specific City Name generator should one be using? The answer lies in the kind of City Name the user is looking for. In the following section, we categorized some of the most commonly searched City Name generators into a single list to easily illustrate different variants of this name generator.

Fantasy City Name Generator

Fantasy City Name generators are the most basic type of City Name generator. It is focused on producing generic fictional City Names that are inclined toward a fantasy setting. This City Name generator is the most abundant and is ideal for suggesting names for a city in novels, video games, and role-playing sketches.

A Dungeons and Dragons or DnD City Name generator fall under this category which suggests City Names based on the languages and naming convention found exclusively in the series. A few examples of City names generated from a DnD City Names generator are:

  • Al-Adwan, the City of Twelve Crypts
  • Filvuendre, the City of the Lost Skies
  • City of Messe’Ilrha
  • Cerulean City of Myntor
  • Ultribar City

Sci-Fi City Name Generator

Sci-Fi City Name Generators are city name generators that focus on science-fiction city names that are futuristic and technologically advanced. A few examples of Sci-Fi City Names are:

  • Remoria City
  • Finevest City
  • Mundane City
  • Delodon City
  • West Altair

city fantasy

Realistic City Name Generator

In contrast to both Sci-Fi and Fantasy City Name generators, a Realistic City Name generator focuses on hyper-realistic city names that sound authentic. Most City names under this category are actual names found all over the world. The sound and spelling may vary depending on the country or region where the city came from. Below are a few examples of realistic City Names.

  • Davai City (Philippines)
  • Arequipa City (Peru)
  • Nantes City (France)
  • City of Chandler (United States of America)
  • Bangkok City (Thailand)

Steampunk City Name Generator

A Steampunk City Name focuses on retro and futuristic concepts. They are also associated with the so-called Victorian-era aesthetics that combines modernized technology and steam-powered engines and transportation. Some common examples of Steampunk City Names are:

  • Roarikland
  • Iverstad
  • Olingburg
  • Burgbury
  • Ivory Pit Stop

Post-Apocalyptic City Name Generator

A Post-Apocalyptic City Name generator is geared towards City names that are relevant to the concept and aftermath of the Apocalypse, or the end of the world. Words associated with the term “Post-Apocalyptic” may include zombies, wilderness, civil wars, wreckages, disease, and nuclear meltdowns. Below are a few examples of Post-Apocalyptic City names:

  • Bunker Hill
  • Area 512
  • Abandoned Crevice
  • Doomsville
  • Central Banquet City

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Random City Name Generator

The last City Name generator type is the Random City Name Generator. This name generator mixed all the name generator types for naming a city. It does not have any core theme or idea and simply provides a random City Name to the user. The major disadvantage of this name generator is its lack of categorical suggestion. Since it does not adhere to any specific theme, users might find it hard to find the ideal City name they are looking for due to the diverse result that this name generator provides.

In Conclusion.

Naming a City is important both in real life and in a fantasy setting. In games, City names exist to guide the player in traversing the open world area of the game. City naming is a key feature for city-building games which allows the player to distinguish multiple cities that they are managing. 

In literature and writing, authors can freely create city scenarios that are imaginatively appealing and appreciative to the readers by traversing the story from one area to the other by simply shifting where the events are happening. This same idea applies to films and TV series.

There are many City Name Generator types, and the most common among them are the Fantasy City Name Generator, Sci-Fi City Name Generator, Realistic City Name Generator, Post Apocalyptic City Name Generator, Steampunk City Name Generator, and Random City Name Generator.

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Maria Sleazer

I’ve long been fascinated with the world RPG. I come from a family of dreamers and storytellers and spent much of my childhood in amongst the fields of flowering blooms and tropical nature. I'm always excited to meet and collaborate with fellow enthusiasts and professionals from across the globe.