I am asking for your thoughts as READERS at least as much as writers.

Sometimes I write stories set in the Equestria Girls world, and I need to MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT placenames and geography!

We know there's a school named Canterlot High, and another school named Crystal Prep.

Each of these schools shares the name of a (much larger) place in Equestria, a city or an 'empire.'

But what about other places?

In a story I recently wrote about Equestria Girls at college, placenames included Canterville and Saddle Arabia. A commenter said this confused him.

In a different story, I had Sunset and Twilight "vacationing in sunny Flora Da," and no one seemed to complain or get confused. For most places in the Equestria Girls world, should I just use Bland Name geography that isn't pony-named or pony-ized?

I guess there are also questions about Equestria Girls world's history and religions, just to make things even worse.

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I tend to situate EqG places within real world geography. For instance, I headcanon that Canterlot is in Oregon, perhaps where Ashland roughly is (Lake Everfree's surrounding geography closely resembles Crater Lake National Park). Maps suggest CHS and CPA are in the same settlement, but incidental dialogue implies they are in separate towns:

Rainbow Dash: Seeing as how they got off a bus from the city and got back on a bus headed to the city, I'll bet they go to...
All but Sunset Shimmer: Crystal Prep.

Given that world's status as the multiversal counterpart to the pony world, from a lore standpoint, you can definitely get away with using a lot of the same pony-punny names that FiM uses for its locales (Manehatten and Trottingham are two examples of this).

Of course, since much of EQG's world is largely unexplored by the show, you've got some leeway to be a little more creative with the setting names if you wish.

Then again, this is fanfiction, so you can say "buck it" and use bland name geography instead.

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In my Equestria Girls—Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) crossover story, I pictured Canterlot City being in Eastern Canada, with the Equestria-fied towns, cities, countries and locations taking place of their real-world counterparts (for example, Manehatten in the place of Manhattan).

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Blatantly ponified names like Baltimare disrupt my immersion, because why would non-horses be so obsessed with horses?

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I tend to prefer ponified versions of real-world locations and if I write a story that features the characters traveling far, Iʼll use ponified names, too. In fact, I wrote an entire blog about it three years ago. To sum it up: yeah, itʼs our Earth, but itʼs not our Earth. Do you our Earth inhabitanting technicolor humans?

The EqG world is diversed as humans. It would be believable if the locations that are ponified are around Canterlot High while other regions can be generic human world names or even based off other creatures.

The whole of America doesn't have to be "Amarerica/Amarica". But using a generic human place name can confuse readers if you don't give enough clues that the world is not of our Earth. Unless, you plan to integrate that way

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Consider this stolen. Need to tie my EQG stuff down anyway.

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If I casually namedrop any other city, it's usually either from Lovecraft or King. Guess that places Canterlot City in Maine.

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Feel free to use as much of it as you want. Another user I know puts Canterlot somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic (either Pennsylvania or Maryland).

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Hell, students make deathbots.

It aint our world. Just bares superficial resemblances.

To go one step further, it could be argued that the things we connect with (they go to english class, mention french etc) are more for the audience than an actual in universe thing.

An interesting question, and important when you're writing EQG fics. For myself, I decided to use real world place names in the human world, and let the world have real geography. Canterlot, or "Canterlot City" as I called it (and I think the series did too) would be the exception. So beyond that, there would be America, England, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Manhattan, etc. I personally found it made more sense that way. I also always pictured Canterlot City on the east coast, personally, but that's just me.

One other interesting thing I'll throw in is what I did with Ponyville. As someone else pointed out, Friendship Games remarked how Crystal Prep was "in the city" and based on the surroundings around CHS, I think it's safe to say that the school and the girls live in a suburban area. What I did in my work was, more or less, make that area the human equivalent of Ponyville.'

See, Canterlot City's geography is definitely different than Equestria's Canterlot. It doesn't seem to be hemmed in at the top of a mountain (which is most of the distance between Canterlot and Ponyville). So, in the human world, Canterlot City was able to expand and eventually incorporated "Appleville" as a suburb within it, rather than the two existing as two separate settlements.

Of course, there are certain place names that I really don't like and would rather change if it came up in my own work, like Equestria Land from Roller Coaster of Friendship. That's just too much of a parallel, you know what I mean?

I personally prefer ponified names — I think it just makes sense, considering how weirdly horse-themed so much of what we know about their world is. But in the end, it really depends on the tone of the fic. A more serious fic is more likely to suffer from an ill-placed horse pun than a slice-of-life or comedy will.

I’ve heard of the usual ponified places used in stories such as Seaddle, whinneapolis, of course Manehatten, Fillydelphia and Baltimare. But I’m sure you can come up with a play on words to make your own place names to that end that sound like ponies made them.