C.S. Lewis named the fictional land of Narnia after Narni, an Italian town whose Latin name is Narnia.
Narni is a town in Umbria, central Italy. In the ancient Roman period it was known as Narnia, a name that Lewis encountered in a Latin context. Lewis later explained that the resemblance between the town’s Latin name and his invented land was intentional rather than accidental.
The real Narni has no direct story role in The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis used the name as a linguistic and imaginative starting point, then created an entirely separate world populated by talking animals, humans, mythical beings, and supernatural powers.
The connection is easy to miss because Narnia is usually discussed as a literary world rather than as a name with a historical geographic source. The town’s modern Italian name is Narni, while the form used by Lewis matches its ancient Latin name.