English geographic knowledge is the product of historical precedents and legacies in European explorations of the world. It is built from convention, full of carryovers from outdated worldviews. In this way, these placenames are clues to different historic moments in Altera, just as the etymologies of places in the real world offer the same sort of mementos.

For example, the names of the earth’s landmasses, continents, regions, as well as toponyms in the continents of Libya, Asea, and Erythrea reflect ancient knowledges. They were normalized by Venetian cartographers, who readily made use of old place names of antiquity but also brought westwards knowledge of the south and the east through contact with their counterparts in the great cities of Alexandriya and Constantinople, which up to the Age Exploration, were critical centres for trafficking both goods, peoples, and ideas across the great landmasses of Borealea and Africa. It is through Venetian trade networks and the pragmatism of their merchants that places along and beyond the Red Sea and the Silk Road could be known to Europeans.

Toponyms in western continental Europea generally correspond to historically European Catholic areas. These are derived from the naming conventions of the Dieppe School, which was influential until becoming eclipsed by the mapmakers of Antwerp. The Antwerp School, in turn, made places of the Arctic and the region of Norway known to the rest of Europea. Thus, the -ny, -land, and -ia suffixes generally correspond to these three schools of cartography influential to the English tradition.

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The Dieppe School also incorporated the less systemic toponyms of the Spanish and Portuguese, which came from early conquests on the continents of Septentrea and Crucea, most of which broke from the practice of coining exonyms loosely inspired by native inhabitants, but instead came from the Doctrine of Discovery.  In contrast, the later Antwerp School fully normalized the practice of transliterating foreign toponyms through the lenses of the local hegemons or in places where there was closer power parity between Europeans and native states. This was especially the case in Indea, Serica, and in the parts of Septentrea and Crucea that were harder to reach for conquistadors. The transliterations made in this time preserve the local pronunciations in the 18th and 19th centuries, however, and may now be quite distant to the modern endonyms.