I made a post a few years back talking about the probable real world inspirations behind Elibe’s different nations. FE stealing names from real world - #11 by Donlot
- The Sacae Plains: I think the first inspiration is quite obvious here: the Mongols and many other nomadic people from the steppe or what is now Central Asia. The other one less so and a bit more far fetched: The Cossacks , having their origin in the Tatar word qazaq (free men) they were basically a mix of Russian, Ukrainian and steppe Asian self governing semi military communities in the south Russian steppe aswell as many other places. Both of these have quite a history of horsearchery aswell as being a warrior society.
If we’re going with this you can probably grab a name generator for Mongolian, Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh, Uzbek, etc cultures and mix something cool sounding together. You could also look at historical people from those cultures which have cool sounding names and mix something together that way. Yermak, Semyonov (maybe just Semyon if you want it less slavic sounding). You could also use the name’s of the cossack hosts themselves like the Terek Host, or terms and words from these cultures, cossacks call their leader the Ataman, and have a wool hat they call Papakha/Papakhi.
Looking at the wikipedia entry for the Eurasian Steppe region, you could also take some geographical terms, like Syr, Amu, Akmol, Bukhar, Shkent, etc.
Here’s a handful of links you could consult too.
One thing you can generally often bet on, is that certainly cultures/nations/etc are often based or inspired by real life counterparts, if you know your history you’ll be able to detect them pretty easily, and can more easily expand upon them. History is just real life world building and lore if you really think about it, so by studying history, you’ll also get better at worldbuilding.