Does anyone know where the Bantu City names come from, I’m working on a map of all the cities

Take a look at this wiki: https://riseofnations.fandom.com/wiki/Bantu

That doesn’t help

Sorry. I thought you might be looking for city names. You weren't real specific. If you're instead looking for specific locations on a map, I'll see if I can find a resource.

Yes I meant the locations. When I type the names I get unrelated stuff

Ryansinbela wrote:

Yes I meant the locations. When I type the names I get unrelated stuff

I think the main problem is one of timeline. In the game, the Bantu are barely post-Neolithic. But if you look at Bantu peoples in Africa, they span from a homeland in Nigeria and spread out across the breadth of the continent and down to modern day South Africa. If you're trying to place their "cities" (villages?) back at 10,000 BCE even up to about 2,000 BCE, it might not be possible. I've found a few maps which show the Bantu migrations, but no cities or even settlements are delineated. The first civ I found was Nok, about 1000 BCE to about 200 CE.

Ryansinbela wrote:

Does anyone know where the Bantu City names come from, I’m working on a map of all the cities

Hey Ryan, I might be able to give you info on this subject.

As Grathocke explained, the first Bantus as represented in the game are mostly known from scientists through linguistic and genetic studies and not from archaeological data or written sources. No archaeological site has yet been found related to this culture and at this time and as far as we know there are no proofs and few chances that they were an "urban" culture like understood for the Mesopotamian cultures represented in era 1.

When facing a case like that in the culture design and given that we must provide a certain number of cities that can be built for each culture we usually operate trying to stay the more historically accurate in our suggestions. For the Bantus, we used several proto-bantu (the oldest common denominator of the nowadays spoke Bantu language) names related to the habitat like the one standing for the house, the dwelling, the village and so on.

So no, you will not find them anywhere on a map or an archaeological paper, but feel free to place them somewhere between the Cameroon grasslands, the Congo basin, or the Great Lakes ;)

Have a great day ;)

This is a very interesting solution. Kudos!

Then what does Mucenge mean

It litarally means "main village"

And what do the others mean

It is a very elegant solution, I like it.
And @SeelingCat thanks, I don't need to go looking for it myself.

Thanks

Realized I could probably also do the Emblematic ones, just for anyone who is curious:

Mupíà Fields - (more correctly, Lupíà or Bupíà/Vupíà since -píà appears to be class 11 or 14) means "burnt grass"

Bagèndí Pioneers - (technically Bagèndì/Vagèndì) means "walkers, travellers," singular form would be Mugèndì

SeelingCat wrote:

After wading through proto-Bantu word lists, I believe basically all of them essentially mean "village," with some variation/exception:

Mucenge (Mucèngè) - "village plaza, capital"; "main village"

Mucúmbà - "chief's village"

Dipáta (Lipátà) - "tract of land pertaining to village or a ward in the village"

Mucé (Kicì, Kicé?; Ncì, Ncé) - not as certain of this but, I think it's "ground"; "country," although I've seen the word more as -ci/-cì rather than -cé (and also a different class)

Ngándá (Ngàndá) - "village"; "house, chief's enclosure"

Mungì - "village"

Dijádi (Lijàdí) - "village"

Gumbo (Ligumbo) - "house, village" (this one is lacking a class prefix, I've seen some mention of it being Class 5, hence Ligumbo)
Mucókó - "village"

Budá (Vudá) - "village"

Hey SeelingCat, thanks a lot for completing my first answer, I confirm your info, they are exact!

And same for the emblematics (quarter and unit)!

Are you studying proto-bantu linguistics by any chance or did you just happen to be a Bantu enthusiast who knows how to research info?

Cheers ;)

And by the way who's up for a "How to cast Maasai city names" challenge haha ?

@FestinaLente while I don‘t know the most represented city in the base game, I think generally places that are represented multiple times have different names each time. But Beijing is the first city for Ming and China with exactly the same name, which is a bit confusing.

Siptah wrote:

@FestinaLente while I don‘t know the most represented city in the base game, I think generally places that are represented multiple times have different names each time. But Beijing is the first city for Ming and China with exactly the same name, which is a bit confusing.

Hey SIptah! That's true, but normally the game should exclude the use of Beijing while playing the Chinese (era 6) for a city if it has already been used by the player or the AI during a previous era as the Ming. Could you confirm me if it wasn't the case in one of your playthrough? 

Also, for this particular case, it was quite impossible to find another orthography that would please everyone and would be understandable.

benblond wrote:

Siptah wrote:

@FestinaLente while I don‘t know the most represented city in the base game, I think generally places that are represented multiple times have different names each time. But Beijing is the first city for Ming and China with exactly the same name, which is a bit confusing.

Hey SIptah! That's true, but normally the game should exclude the use of Beijing while playing the Chinese (era 6) for a city if it has already been used by the player or the AI during a previous era as the Ming. Could you confirm me if it wasn't the case in one of your playthrough? 

Also, for this particular case, it was quite impossible to find another orthography that would please everyone and would be understandable.

 

Yes, I founded it twice in the same game last week when trying to collect Era Stars with Ming and China. I can see the difficulties with finding another orthography, and the solution to skip it as China if Ming already founded it seems the most reasonable approach.

Siptah wrote:

benblond wrote:

Siptah wrote:

@FestinaLente while I don‘t know the most represented city in the base game, I think generally places that are represented multiple times have different names each time. But Beijing is the first city for Ming and China with exactly the same name, which is a bit confusing.

Hey SIptah! That's true, but normally the game should exclude the use of Beijing while playing the Chinese (era 6) for a city if it has already been used by the player or the AI during a previous era as the Ming. Could you confirm me if it wasn't the case in one of your playthrough? 

Also, for this particular case, it was quite impossible to find another orthography that would please everyone and would be understandable.

 

Yes, I founded it twice in the same game last week when trying to collect Era Stars with Ming and China. I can see the difficulties with finding another orthography, and the solution to skip it as China if Ming already founded it seems the most reasonable approach.

Thanks for the feedback about Beijing ! 

We're gonna investigate it soon ^^

FestinaLente wrote:

Ryansinbela wrote:

Does anyone know where the Bantu City names come from, I’m working on a map of all the cities

Hey Ryan, I might be able to give you info on this subject.

As Grathocke explained, the first Bantus as represented in the game are mostly known from scientists through linguistic and genetic studies and not from archaeological data or written sources. No archaeological site has yet been found related to this culture and at this time and as far as we know there are no proofs and few chances that they were an "urban" culture like understood for the Mesopotamian cultures represented in era 1.

 

When facing a case like that in the culture design and given that we must provide a certain number of cities that can be built for each culture we usually operate trying to stay the more historically accurate in our suggestions. For the Bantus, we used several proto-bantu (the oldest common denominator of the nowadays spoke Bantu language) names related to the habitat like the one standing for the house, the dwelling, the village and so on.

 

So no, you will not find them anywhere on a map or an archaeological paper, but feel free to place them somewhere between the Cameroon grasslands, the Congo basin, or the Great Lakes ;)

Have a great day ;)

  

That's such an inventive solution! Definitely another reason why I love this game! Can I ask why a different approach was chosen for the Olmecs? Is it because we don't know as much about a proto Mixe-Zoquean language that the Olmecs may have spoken or was there a design choice to use the modern Spanish names for the archaeological sites?

I'm not dev, but, if I recall correctly, last time this was brought up that was the reason, there's no known language to even attempt such solution with.

Hello again, 

Well, at that time we couldn't find any good solution because as you have previously said: there is no full consensus about the language used by Olmecs, while even in the "proto languages" dictionnaries we had access to, there wasn't a viable solution for all the cities. 

Also, the "spansih" names are not really city names but archeological sites which gave their names to thoses cities in scientific publications as well as for touristic purposes.

Anyway, we went for the more well known and accepted "modern" names because it would have been quite weird to invent names for sites that were well known, and it could had been seen as offensive in a way.

For the Bantu we had the exact opposite issue: the lack of archeological settlements gave us the opportunity to introduce players to Proto Bantu names

I hope I was clear enough. ^^ But of course I think there isn't any perfect solution.

benblond wrote:

Hello again, 

Well, at that time we couldn't find any good solution because as you have previously said: there is no full consensus about the language used by Olmecs, while even in the "proto languages" dictionnaries we had access to, there wasn't a viable solution for all the cities. 

Also, the "spansih" names are not really city names but archeological sites which gave their names to thoses cities in scientific publications as well as for touristic purposes.

Anyway, we went for the more well known and accepted "modern" names because it would have been quite weird to invent names for sites that were well known, and it could had been seen as offensive in a way.

For the Bantu we had the exact opposite issue: the lack of archeological settlements gave us the opportunity to introduce players to Proto Bantu names

I hope I was clear enough. ^^ But of course I think there isn't any perfect solution.

Thank you very much for your response. It's always fascinating to learn about these design choices!