I see this topic often, and it has good reason. Naming neighborhoods is so hard, naming Sims seems to be a bit easier, or is that just me? I know of a tool that let's you search up random cities and some people combine them, but what do you do if you are trying to come up with something Maxis style and original? I love the name Riverblossom Hills, but I don't want to reuse it! I was thinking of something similar like Seablossom Shores, but I don't know if that sounds right/good.

I have a neighborhood I am trying to name, and as I said before- all I have come up with so far is Seablossom Shores. What should I call it? It's a VERY large hood (so I can expand as I please) and it's right next to the sea with plenty of room for beach lots. It will have some palm trees and such, but mostly normal trees. How do the hood builders go about choosing names?

I called my main hood "The one with the lake" for about a year and a half before the current name (Sandersville) just came to me while I was doing some routine data entry at work. I believe the name that displayed on the loading screen was just the name of the template I used to make the hood before I came up with the name. You can change the name at any time, so don't feel any pressure to come up with the perfect name before you can begin playing. I am glad that I came up with "Sandersville" eventually, because I've had lots of rebuilds and two terrain changes since then, and neither of the new terrains had a lake in them. But even if I hadn't come up with a name, it wouldn't have mattered -- it would've still been "that hood -- you know, the one I play all the time."

"Seablossom Shores" sounds nice, maybe like a resort or a retirement community or some other slow-paced, relaxed setting. If you're going for edgy and urban, maybe you'd want to change it up, but otherwise, why change? You have a name you like and it's your game.

Yea, it's a relaxed place like Pleasantview or Riverblossom Shores. Thanks for the help, I just don't know what I ever should call something. I will probably keep the name Seablossom Shores but I am also planning on later making another 'hood that's a city and also two colleges- one for each hood. Oh gosh, so many names.

Hey, my custom college is called "I.S.I." because I used the Moon ISLands template, and Iowercase L and capital I look exactly alike in the Sims font. I think the first I stands for Institute, but I haven't a clue what the S or the second I stand for, and I've been playing it for at least three years! "Fancy College" and "Vo Tech" would work fine, or "City College" and "Beach College."

When it comes to naming the buildings on campus, I'm equally imaginative: "Library, "Theater," "Art Building," "Gym" and so on. Eventually, something will happen either in game or in life that will make me want to change the name, and then I do. "Library" became "The Marcel Sanders Memorial Library" after the first Sim I had that topped the Education career. "Theater" became "Leefish Auditorium" after I needed a theater name for some theatrical posters I was making for an event over at Leefish (the site). "Dorm 1" became "Gilbert Hall" after I played out my third Gilbert & Sullivan Plot there. "Dorm 2" is still "Dorm 2." Just go with the flow -- it's all good!

I have a subhood called Riversong Pond. Can't imagine what inspired that...

My main hood is called Saffronia, which came out of nowhere in a moment of desperation, and I don't particularly like it, though it has at least prompted names for some of the roads - Crocus Street, Stamen Street, etc. Brock Lane and Calvert Close are named after members of Hawkwind. Skatolo Close is derived from the Esperanto for 'box', since it originally contained eight identical houses (all made out of ticky-tacky and all look just the same), though it should have been Skatoleto Close to mean 'little box'.

Saffronia is part of the Confederacy of Zentralia (somewhere in Europe), with a number of other districts that don't exist yet (and probably never will, they just lurk offstage). They include Adricburg and Teganyssa to continue the Doctor Who theme. Downtown is called Rassillon, which is also DW-related.

Not very creative when it comes to names either, are you? I've never played the Sims 1, and I have only ever played 30 minutes of Sims 4 (Game Time) so maybe since I like Maxis names, I could steal some from there, since it wouldn't be reusing it (since those are different games, and the names are unknown to me so it won't feel like I've used them before).

Oh, naming neighborhoods . . . well, other than the megahood which shows up as Pleasantview, there's 'Medieval Kingdom' and there's 'Testing', 'Challenges'. 'LarkRune Apocalypse', 'Phaenoh Apocalypse' and 'Building'.

And then of course the new neighborhoods with sims in them which come with names. Then there are a couple with no sims that were created to see what terrains look like that are named after the terrain from SC4 'Bay View' and 'Volcano'.

Really, I'm creative. But I prefer to know which one was used for what, and since I play a few weeks at one thing and then a few at another, it might be two months or more before I get back to a particular hood.

Slapping a 'New' in front of any of the Sims 1 or 3 hoods, since those are both set before Sims 2, would be perfectly good, like 'York' and 'New York', if you wanted to establish that sort of history. Using a sim's name--a lot of places are named after people: my home town is named after a local chief. Or look at a planning and zoning map or at the Multiple Listing System (the real estate agents' shared web database thing) and see what the subdivisions are named: the EA names look very much like subdivision names to me, and you say you like those, so that might be a good source.

I was rubbish at coming up with names, until I found this: It's a list of British surnames, which often make GREAT place names, especially when you go right back into the 30s and 40s rather than the more common names.

Some of them don't work, but lots do. http://surname.sofeminine.co.uk/w/s...britain-40.html

From page 40:
Greenacre
Stansbridge
Sinton
Stubley
Knoxville
Worton
Woolmore
Lambourne

I have a complete thing for names but don't do much neighbourhood naming since I only really play Little Carping. Polgannon is a made up name which is based on typical Cornish word parts - appropriate since it's set in Cornwall. I'm never happy till I've got the name right.

My subhoods, apart from the university (which is assumed to be on the outskirts of my main hood), are named as if they were different towns. Currently there is (or is about to be):

- SimHampton: I named this back in 2000, before Maxis considered multiple hoods an option. I wanted something with "Sim" in it to fit the general Maxis naming custom for the Sim franchise. After rejecting SimTown, SimVille and SimCity (already games by that name!), Simsby/Simby, Simfield/Simmerfield, Simsop, Simton/Simmington/Simnington, Simland and Simlock (all endings of local towns and villages, none felt right) and Simwright (also a local village ending that felt wrong, but at least this one honoured Will Wright ), I tried the ending of not-very-local town Northampton - and liked it. It's in camel case because back then I thought camel case was cool. (I no longer do, but it still feels wrong to type "SimHampton" without the long-standing excess capital letter).

- SimColony: I had a space exploration storyline early in The Sims 1, and this was the first colony my Sims established. They weren't the most imaginative Sims ever, so I made them give it an unimaginative name. This, too, was in the "camel case" phase.

- Télanen: The capital of the elven lands, that is sometimes a playable subhood when I play. All elven names in the game I have must possess at least two "e"s, one of which must be accented, I was experimenting with different names that obeyed that rule and sounded vaguely elvish, and "Télanen" sounded good to me.

- Throne-O'-Sims: Wanted something posh-sounding for the beach subhood.

- Alegnia Viaduct: "Alegnia" was a purely made-up name. "Viaduct" was because there was a huge viaduct on the neighboughood map and I thought, "This is supposed to be a quaintly rural planet - surely the citizens could not have a viaduct that huge and not pass comment on it!" It seriously didn't looked like it belonged there, but it sure made a statement!

- Borealis: It's supposed to be a planet that is mostly forest, with small clearings for touristy stuff. "Boreal" is a word for somewhere full of trees, and "borealis" is the ending of at least one constellation name, as it's the place where the stars are clearest due to low technology levels.

- Drioru Forest: It has drioru in it, it's a forest, drioru don't do fancy names.

- Ice Fields: The local name isn't pronounceable to non-locals, and the Sims visiting from SimHampton mostly know it as the only place where ice is commercially produced. In fields.

- Shotell Marsh: Mostly known for its cinema and theatre productions, the name is a corruption of "show-tell" and pronounced likewise.

It's tough coming up with neighborhood names, but I'll often just put a couple of nature words together, or one nature word with a color or a word meaning town/village/settlement. Redcliff. Whitewater Spring. Green Island. Forest Hills. Woodville. Things like that.




Institute of Sim Learning?

Well, except the second letter is also an I now, instead of an L. Institute of Sim Instruction, maybe? That might even be right, and it's closer than I've gotten in three years, so thanks!

Or perhaps International School of (or for) (intelligence? ideas? innovation?

Institute of Sl.... (something) if you want to keep the L. http://www.litscape.com/word_tools/starts_with.php

I generally get the names of my hoods from a tv show or movie. Like Cabot Cove (Murder She Wrote), Collinsport (Dark Shadows). Or Stephen King novels. Like Derry, Maine (It), Tarker's Mills, Maine (Silver Bullet), Chamberlain, Maine (Carrie), Castle Rock, Maine (Cujo).

Although, I play megahoods, I love the charm of small town names.

I just recently came across 2 hood names I'm thinking of using, though. Night Surf or maybe Sea Breeze Cove.

Since I live in a rather quaint suburban town, the neighborhood names (main and sub-hoods) that I come up with often reflect my environment (even if I try and get super creative). So, they tend to all sound rather picturesque.

Naming the downtown neighborhood is really the challenging part for me - so it's usually just named 'Main Street' or something along those lines.

Yeah, I know...nothing fancy here, but it is what it is.

Backstory is totally the way to go. Look at the map from the point of view of the people who would be giving the names. Arbitrary names such as those we see on modern subdivisions are a relatively recent development; most place names arose when people who lived in an area needed them, and were simple descriptors. The reason names like Paris and Berlin don't sound descriptive is because languages have evolved since they were named, so if you want a place to sound like it's been around for 500 years, you might do well to give it a simple descriptive name - City on the Bay - and then backengineer some Simlish for it, or translate it into a language you're familiar with, but don't use every day, and then look for archaic forms of those words, or mash them together, or mangle them by saying them with an inappropriate accent and spelling that phonetically, or...just play around with it.

If a town is growing up around some geographical feature that's important economically, name it after that feature. If one family is particularly important to the foundation of the town, name it after that family, or someone important to them. Why is the town located here, and not somewhere else? Who got to name it, anyway? There's lots of towns in America named after the families and lovers of the surveyors who were making the maps.

Make a joke with the name. Drama Acres is a joke name, and the fact that I smile every time I say or write it doesn't detract from my emotional attachment to the characters, at all.

You said the area would have lots of trees, what kind? Cedar Hills, Pine Valley, Black Oak Meadows, Ashwood Grove ...

*Pumps fists in air* GO WHOVIANS!!

Edit: And thanks for everyone's help.

P.S. Love the username. <3

For me, I always choose names that are relevant to the my game play style. My main 'hood is title "Paradiso de Mañana" simply because it is my own little paradise that continues to evolve into the future.

This website is quite neat to use: http://k4supply.com/nametown.php
Just click F5 and it will generate new names every time

Heh. That one just offered me Circleover, West Berrybury Farm, Lower Highwell Woods and Mount Burlingriver Lake. Sometimes randomness creates bizarre results... (Greendale was nice, though.)

I tried that generator. What kind of name for a town is "Sharonside Furnace"?

Edit: Try saying Mount Carppark Park really fast. Sounds like a dog.

There's a town near me named Dawton Furnace. There used to be an iron ore furnace there. The furnace building - an impressive thing - is still there and was built in the late 1800's. There are quite a few towns in the mountains around here called Something Furnace for the same reason. That may be where Sharonside gets its Furnace.

Sounds like it'd be a perfect name for a little town in or near Death Valley. :P