Name for a Feudal Japan-inspired setting

So, I've got a setting which is inspired a lot by Feudal Japan, although I'm also taking inspiration from a few Southeast and South Asian countries, as well as some Middle-eastern cultures (in order to spice things up and create some noticeable differences between the various noble clans and regions - similarly to how Westeros in general seems to be based on Britain, but each region has aspects of other medieval european cultures). Anyway, I've tried looking for a good Japanese-inspired word that could be used for this setting, but haven't found any (and I don't speak Japanese myself or trust Google Translate, so I can't go for a Meaningful Name either).

So, if anyone here happens to know of a great name that would fit nicely for this setting, or can point me in a good direction to look for inspiration to find such a name on my own, I'd appreciate it. If it helps, I imagined the setting as an archipelago of many large and smaller islands in close proximity (think like Useful Notes/Indonesia and the other island countries in the Indian Ocean), with some climate variations (for example, I imagined one or two of the larger islands having large deserts/steppes, whereas other islands would be more tropical).

This has to be an actual word in Japanese? Or can it be something made-up?

If accurate Japanese is there it's a benefit. Though gracious Japanese shouldn't hurt too much. Still.

Can be made up, I just thought something Japanese-sounding would be appropriate.

Talking to me, or him?

Talking to you OP

In that case, I'm not sure what you mean. Could you explain/rephrase?

I was talking about some gracious Japanese or Japanese sounding word wouldn't be too bad. What do you intend the story to be like?

Well, I'm still in the early stages of development, so I haven't hashed out most of the story details yet. The general idea so far, though, is for the competition between two empires in the region (essentially, their conflict started long ago because the respective empires' ruling clans both claim to be the rightful inheritors to a previous clan which managed to unify the entire region in order to fight back some great (magical) evil threat, but later died out after a war between its branch families, and the empire subsequently fell apart, with the two aforementioned empires trying to bring the pieces back under their control - though to spice things up a bit, they're not fighting over who gets to be emperor per se, but rather over who gets to be the emperor's successor/steward: think like the shoguns or the caliphs, who effectively had a similar amount of power as the emperor and the prophet, respectively, but didn't claim to be equal to them) to heat up again when a lesser nation in between the two ends up having a succession crisis. Both empires have members related to that nation's ruling house through marriage, and so have convenient candidates to try and put on the throne - which means war between the empires over who can make their favored candidate the new ruler, with the poor lesser nation caught in the middle, as naturally most of the fighting ends up occurring there.

If you have some thoughts/suggestions on that, you're of course welcome to make them

edited 5th Nov '14 2:43:37 AM by Kardavnil

Ni-no-Kuni. "Country of Two"/"Two-Country", as rendered in poorly-understood Japanese. (It wouldn't actually work that way in real Japanese, because 'ni' isn't used to count anything but a count of numbers.)

Also a Aura Battler Dunbine reference, he he.

edited 6th Nov '14 9:02:54 AM by DeusDenuo

IMO a Japanese-sounding name would just obnoxiously underline that your inspiration is historical Japan.

In response to obnoxiously Western-inspired fantasy, is the idea I think.

Like Deus said - historical Japan is at least a little more original inspiration for fantasy than historical west europe. You still make a decent point, though.

Hmm, no offense, but for some reason that name just makes me picture the Knights who say 'Ni'. And there's going to be more than two countries in the region, so the meaning doesn't feel too relevant. It could work as a name for one of the islands, or to refer to two countries brought together through a personal union, though.

Eming (long "E")

Mekoquo

Ashagura

Simiro

Bonda-ka

edited 10th Nov '14 3:22:41 PM by demarquis