Naming the 12 Realms' Fictional World

with Author Rachael Ritchey

Good day to you, my friend! Today we name the world of the Twelve Realms!

Next week, I’ll be sharing a short story.

The first and most important thing I want to do today, though, is say THANK YOU to everyone who offered up names for the 12 Realms’ world. There were so many great ones. And, if you’re okay with it, I already have ideas for how to use some of them in other places in the Twelve Realms’ world (for other countries and cities)!

It was a great week of wonderful ideas and suggestions! I love how creative all the names are, and I had an extremely hard time narrowing down the list.

I put the names into a document to print and removed the contributor names to reduce the chances of any favoritism. I really wanted to get to the names that fit best with how I myself might have chosen for the world (since my mind lives in it so much to write).

all 56 names submitted!

There were nearly 60 names submitted! It felt a bit daunting to even begin after physically laying out the names around the map.

I did two rounds (both of which took me foreeeeever to narrow further).

These were the 2nd round cuts.

I ended up with eight names in the final round.

These were the final eight I settled on to go in the cup

And these went in the cup.

Here’s a 1-minute video with my helper as we chose the final name:

The process was fun, but it was your help and participation that made it so!

Thank you to everyone who contributed ideas for names!

The Winning Name

The Twelve Realms, Crescent Cave Nation, Dark Lands, Desert Regions of Akha, Gankobi and the whole of the countries are part of the world of Patica!

Patica!

I had no idea whose names I was left with in the eight that went in the cup!

I was pleasantly surprised to see that my dad’s name idea is the one I pulled out (although, any of them would have been a pleasant surprise).

Naming things

In a fantasy world, for most writers, it is much more than a random pick and choose sort of deal, so having your help isn’t a typical way to name a place. That’s one reason I’m so thankful for the level of creativity everyone put into it. Names ranged from real world Latin, Gaelic, and other languages to totally made up names to names based on characters in the books!

You see, many authors, including me, take a lot of effort to think through the names we give to characters and places in our stories. They have to make sense and be congruent based on the cultures our characters come from, the country itself. In fact, it’s often attempted to make each country in a world have its own sort of naming rules for places and people to deepen the worldbuilding and make it feel more real.

With that in mind, Patica will be what the Twelve Realms calls the world, but someone from Gankobi, where they speak a different language, might call the world “Pateekah” or even something completely different, like “Etrijan” or “Auriz.”

Why Name the World?

This is going to sound silly, but in real life I tend to say, “What on Earth?” when something surprises and confuses me, and in one of the books I really wanted a character to say this, but I didn’t want them to say “Earth” because it didn’t fit right, knowing that while this place was Earth-like it wasn’t really Earth. It’s a fantasy world, after all! I couldn’t decide on a name, and it’s been bugging me ever since!

Well, congrats, to my dad! I think he’s obviously had an influence on me. Haha! It was probably all those Saturdays watching Dr Who and Star Trek together that did it.

What science fiction and fantasy worlds come to mind when you think of odd and interesting names for places?

Next week: Look out for a short story from the world of The Twelve Realms!