Thread: I need a name for a gothic, futuristic city.

I'm stuck with this!

I have a steampunk futuristic story that I'm currently outlining. The city itself is a huge part of the plot and I really need a good name for it. My source of inspiration is Gotham City, but of course I need another name!

It's the most technologically advanced city of the world, with buildings so tall that the ground barely gets any light. Cars hover over the magnetic railways that rise dozens and hundreds of meters above the ground, further blocking light from reaching the ground.

The city is organized in grounds, huge structures resembling platforms that use skyscrapers as their pillars by reinforcing them to the point they can't serve their original purpose anymore. The grounds make the city look like a man-made mountain, with each ground being successively smaller and rising higher into the sky. This of course has several implications.

Ground 3, the highest layer, is built from the tallest skyscrapers. It is mostly devoid of crime and social problems; it is where the rich and the politicians live. Its very center is the Saleinn Corporation's central building, the tallest in the world.

Ground 2 and 1 are where the common people live. They where the first grounds built and they have both been expanded to the point where most of the original city is devoid of light. Ground 2 is quite a bit better than Ground 1, but they are both strictly regulated by law and highly secure.

Ground 0 is the rock bottom of the city. Pavement roads from the 21st century are still there along with traffic lights, and buildings that companies abandoned in favor of the higher grounds. This is the place where the social outcasts and criminals alike live their daily lives, a place where night is eternal and crime and diseases proliferate.

A big part of the story is set on Ground 0, because this is a story about vampires (of the morally ambiguous ones, not the sparkling types). The perpetual darkness of Ground Zero made the perfect place for the Crimson Conglomerate, a corporate group shrouded in mystery.

Well, that's pretty much the background of the city. I thought about giving it a more conventional name like Rockport to suggest the city was, at some point, a city like any other.

But they could have easily changed the name after a couple of centuries, so maybe that wasn't a good idea. However, I can't seem to think of something good, what do you guys think?

Wow, I gotta say that sounds like a fascinating setting for a story. I can only imagine the view from the top floor of the Saleinn Corp. building, a tall skyscraper on top of several levels constructed on top of other skyscrapers..!

Here are a few thoughts I had:

-- Is the Saleinn Corp. kind of a "megacorporation" like Omni Consumer Products from Robocop? What if they named the city something referential to the name "Saleinn"?
-- Since each set of grounds seems to be kind of culturally and socially separated from the other, what if the denizens of each ground referred to their own ground by their own made-up name? (I realize this doesn't help your problem of coming up with one name, it compounds it into thinking of multiple names... but I thought I'd suggest it anyway.)
-- I like the idea of the city having once had a conventional city name like Rockport but I agree that eventually people might change it centuries later when it's been built over that much.
-- I am reminded of "Rapture" from the Bioshock games... maybe you could go with a deliberately slightly cheesy "inspirational" type word, like "Enlightenment" or "Transcendence", something that reflects the intentions of the city's builders. Plus you could play off how stark a contrast the name was to the lower grounds.

If I think of anything else I'll post again.

Dreisalngrund

Caelumscala translation "sky stairs"

Or if you want to go retro, Transmetropolis, after the Fritz Lang movie, with a nod to Dracula's historic home. etymology: "beyond mother city"

Gotham City?

Oh, wait. You already mentioned that...

Seriously now: Corinth? Philippi?

You could try translating to German, Polish, Russian or Old English, like ppsage did.

Ground 0 definitely has to retain its old names. I'd rather think that these people on the rock-bottom ground are those who despise the upper echelons and will stick to their own, reminisce to the good old days, or at least cling to it.

Alderan

As you are starting at ground zero and working up how about Nine, with precincts 11, 12, 13 and 14. 9/11 of course is synonymous with ground zero.

Originally Posted by VanishingSpy

Here are a few thoughts I had:

-- Is the Saleinn Corp. kind of a "megacorporation" like Omni Consumer Products from Robocop? What if they named the city something referential to the name "Saleinn"?

Saleinn Corp is the largest corporation of this fictional world. It has the largest collection of patents and intellectual rights, and the city owns all of its glory to it. It's like Wayne Corp and Stark Industries mixed together!

I thought about naming the city as Saleinn City, but it just doesn't sound right...

-- Since each set of grounds seems to be kind of culturally and socially separated from the other, what if the denizens of each ground referred to their own ground by their own made-up name? (I realize this doesn't help your problem of coming up with one name, it compounds it into thinking of multiple names... but I thought I'd suggest it anyway.)

They are not so culturally separated as it sounds, save for Ground Zero. The city is not as rundown as other steampunk settings, and is in fact fairly well off. The whole concept came up when I saw two men sleeping under a bridge yesterday. The image of an entire city, not just a bridge, built far above them came upon me and I fell in love with it.

-- I like the idea of the city having once had a conventional city name like Rockport but I agree that eventually people might change it centuries later when it's been built over that much.

Yes, and I plan to bring this up at some point!

-- I am reminded of "Rapture" from the Bioshock games... maybe you could go with a deliberately slightly cheesy "inspirational" type word, like "Enlightenment" or "Transcendence", something that reflects the intentions of the city's builders. Plus you could play off how stark a contrast the name was to the lower grounds.

That is actually a pretty good idea! I'm going to look up some words and see what I can come up with.

If I think of anything else I'll post again.

Thanks, I'd really appreciate it.

Caelumscala translation "sky stairs"

Or if you want to go retro, Transmetropolis, after the Fritz Lang movie, with a nod to Dracula's historic home. etymology: "beyond mother city"

Those are good names, I particularly liked the term "sky stairs." I think the central theme for the city's name is going to be "to reach the skies" or "to reach heaven". Thanks for the inspiration!

Oh, wait. You already mentioned that...

Seriously now: Corinth? Philippi?

You could try translating to German, Polish, Russian or Old English, like ppsage did.

Ground 0 definitely has to retain its old names. I'd rather think that these people on the rock-bottom ground are those who despise the upper echelons and will stick to their own, reminisce to the good old days, or at least cling to it.

I'm looking for a name that's simple and grandiose, but not too hard to decipher. I liked VanishingSpy's idea of naming it along the lines of Bioshock's Rapture; it's simple and has a lot of meaning conveyed into it.

I spent some time thinking about skies, heaven, nines, rapture, and things ending with opolis.

Auropolis came to mind from the word "Aurelia" which came up from "Aurora". I also need a name for the technology that made Saleinn Corp and the city be what it is, so this might just be it.

Gold city? Sounds good. Could change the spelling though:

Aurepolis.

can you talk a little about the city's history? like what was there before it was a city? was it just wilderness or perhaps an older city? if so, what was it called before this new city was built?

Gold city? Sounds good. Could change the spelling though:
Aurepolis.

Hmm...

What about Aureopolis?

can you talk a little about the city's history? like what was there before it was a city? was it just wilderness or perhaps an older city? if so, what was it called before this new city was built?

The was initially called Rockport (name subject to change), I can't tell you an exact time frame because the setting's time frame is vague to begin with. At the very least I know it was there by the 21st century, and it was a pretty unimportant port city surrounded by mountains.

It had rather average population and economy, until Saleinn came around. It was initially called Saleinn Technologies, and it was just a front to market a certain technology that would change the world: the Aurelia (name subject to change) system. It was a computer-controlled magnetic field that could create kinetic forces with so much precision that things like hovering cars, particle accelerators, and magnetism-based reactors became commonplace. Thanks to this technology, Saleinn Technologies grew rapidly into a corporation that spawned several fields, and soon held a monopoly in technology research. The city's economy quickly escalated as Saleinn Corp became world leader in economics and research, and then came the renovation project, mostly founded by Saleinn Corp and several other major companies. The official purpose of rebuilding the entire city was to create an infrastructure where technology research and manufacturing would not be limited by physical constraints, but their true intent is left to speculation.

Regardless, the first "Ground" was Ground One, an immense platform built reusing buildings as pillars that rose 212 meters above the ground. In the following years the Ground Two and Three projects started.

From then on, the city was known as Aureopolis.

That's pretty much the background I have thought of. I'll flesh it out a little more as I write

Cool history. But I still prefer Aurepolis. Or-REP-ul-iss.

Think about it.

Portumpetris, my latin isn't great but I think that should be the 'gate of rock' as in 'Rockport'. nice and alliterative and could be construed metaphorically.

If you made that the original base layer you could name the layers, like portumlucem for the top one 'gate of light' and have portum for the city, sorry, only amusing myself really.

i just thought it would add nice element of it to have to big corporate official name of the city while people who are old enough or live in the slums call it by it's original or older name.