I have finally put the finishing touches on the map for the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th nations of the Southern Union. The previous post by me that you can read by clicking here outlined how the islands came to be in an “out-of-character” type of way, however I intend on doing travel guides for all four nations in the future – as well as baseball leagues of course.
I previously decided that I wouldn’t do anymore than 4 nations, but here we are at 8 now, and I can safely say that with my life getting busier and busier, if I do increase the number of nations in the Southern Union, they will be small atoll-style nations in a similar vain to Le Grout and certainly no more than two more to bring the total number of nations to ten. They will probably be in the Antarctic circle and not be tourist hotspots, and more like Greenland for example (not to disparage the great gamut of Greenland readers I have of course!).
Interesting Names
Whilst I endeavour to create realistic place names in keeping with the culture I wish to represent as well as the location on the map (Water Bay wouldn’t be a great name for a town in the middle of the island, 200km away from any coastline for example), sometimes I do put in little Easter eggs for amusement and name places after my friends and family in the English-centric nations. In the Dutch nations, there’s some real-life amusing place names that I added because I’m a 4-year old at heart. Here’s a list of some of them, see if you can find them:
Albaland
- Fraserburgh is located only 50km north of Frazerburgh.
- Newton Mearns and Newton Stewart are situated next to one another.
- Mount Falkland and Falkland River pays homage to the Falkland Islands.
- New Edinburgh is named after the large city in Scotland.
- Rothes and Forres is a homage to the same locations in Koana Islands.
- A town called Dollar which actually exists in Scotland. Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to add it.
- the town of Anthony, named after my father.
- Rocky River. Named after my first dog.
- Blackford and Smithton situated near each other.
Houtmansland
- The large town of Bath.
- Laurens and Park, two stranger real-life place names I found.
- Two towns called Elft and Irght. The first letter of Left and Right has been moved over one. Elft is a real place.
- Daarle. A real place name in Netherlands, but it was too good for me to not use as an in-joke with the family as the shortened version of “Darling”.
Novainsula
- Kendricks Peninsula, named after my second dog.
- The town of Gibbsy, named after a colleague at work.
- neighbouring towns of New Sock and Old Sock. Named after a retired work colleague.
- Aiden and Wellsy, two towns named after friends.
- The village and the town of Preston. Two Prestons, located quite close to one another!
- Sheringham, named after Teddy Sheringham, an English football (soccer) player.
- Linton. Named after Linton Travelodge, where Alan Partridge stayed in the show “I’m Alan Partridge”. Can you spot East Linton, located over 100km away in another country?
Zuidgelders
- The village of Wee and the town of Leek.
- Thankfully, neither are located near Winkel!
- Berk and Derp are situated quite close to one another.
- Rome? Maybe the Romans explored more of the world than we first thought.
- There’s a small village called Tin.
- Maybe you could go camping near Tent?
- Or go for a tour of America?
- Just make sure you don’t Reek like a Wiesel after a night out at various Baars.