TIME FOR AN UPDATE
I thought about this more recently (today, in fact) and came up with a number of things for it that I can't figure why I didn't notice needed fixing. Was going to add to the old post, but it'd become very tl;dr. Also, formatting OCD.

First, dealing with the world itself before the change. Here we go with the name generators-

welcome to actanthica

Here we have a planet very much like ours. It has things like computers and handphones, politicians and governments, and pretty much anything that we have. It also happens to have this thing we would call magic. More on that later.

It has five continents among a bunch of smaller countries and islands. In order of size:
1. Leysing (which is where much of the action takes place)
2. Egias
3. Caspitrea
4. Sarianica
5. Triatur

// insert stuff about the major countries...

magic

Magic in Actanthica relies on a kind of invisible substance that resembles a gas. It's produced by hitherto unknown processes in the core of the planet, where it leaks to the surface through holes in the crust. It's undetectable by sight or smell, but can be measured with special devices. Officially named "sigium" by scientists, but most people call it "aether". (Just like you call dihydrogen monoxide "water".) Aether is not exactly a chemical, but appears to behave in greatly similar ways, such that it is often termed one.

The most notable effect of aether is that it makes things you want to see happen. This is the basis of magic in Actanthica - the air around people grants wishes, in a broad sense. Very broad. Studies have shown that this is not as easy as it sounds - for a person to use the aether as he or she requires, the person has to have three things: intent, a catalyst, and sufficient aether in his or her immediate vicinity.

Intent is a tricky thing. The amount of aether in a person's surrounding affects the amount of intent required to set off a reaction - a limiting factor, so to speak - and the amount of intent affects the amount of aether required to do the same. Not enough intent, or not enough aether, will cause nothing or almost nothing to happen.
Intent consists of a desire for the event to occur, plus a visualisation of its effects. Visualisation is not strictly necessary, but highly recommended - folk tales all over Actanthica tell of foolish humans who neglect to visualise, and end up receiving results they did not expect to get.
In recent times, with the diminishing amount of aether in highly-populated regions, stronger and stronger intentions are required to set off any effect at all. Sometime in history, it was discovered that speaking out one's intentions made it easier to use magic, and thus spells were born. As time passed, even that became harder and harder to use to create sufficient effects, and spells continued to grow to such atrocious length that the spoken spell lost its feasibility. Then, someone invented the spellcard, which holds the spell at its full length on a card, which is activated by a much smaller, less aether-costly spell. It sets off a chain reaction that eventually leads to the desired effect. Cutting-edge technology involves research into ways to shorten the cast-effect delay (involving the magic equivalent of assembly language), as well as ways to further reduce aether cost (to be eco-friendly). (Plus the ever-pressing issue of how to reduce card thickness.)
In essence, all one has to do to use a spell that might have been 100 words long is to hold a spellcard and say the words of activation, which are usually written on the card itself. The downside is that these cards usually have fixed effects (safety device to prevent misuse of the card's makeup, catalyst and all) - you can't use, say, a house-cleaning spell to kill someone, unless said house-cleaning is connected to some lethal device. However, the cards require less mental strain to use compared to a cardless cast (you can be completely distracted while using a properly made card and have it still work perfectly, since all the instructions are in the card itself), which means greater convenience.
As for the specifics on the language of spells- there isn't one. You just say what you want. Rather boring and lacking in arcane-ness, but it wasn't arcane to begin with. Everyone lives with it, so it's got to be easy to use. The hard part is being specific enough for it to do exactly what you want it to do. (Of course, you could always attempt to make it sound arcane by reciting spells in some dead scholarly language...)

Catalysts are substances that amplify the effects of a cast. It's generally accepted that the catalysts provide a surface for the aether to stick onto, which increases the amount of successful reaction with intent.
Some people carry these around, but not many actually use them, unless they're potent catalysts. Spell reciting is slow and expensive, after all.
Spellcards come with these attached, perhaps sandwiched between the paper, or actually form part of the paper.
Important things to note:
1. Catalysts must not be explosive. (Sounds obvious, but catalysts that cause incredibly high reaction rates are very prone to making things explode...)
2. Catalysts on disposable objects must be safe to dispose of by usual methods, or even better, biodegradable.
Spellcards are usable for as long as the catalyst stays usable. Of course, card manufacturers don't want them to last too long. Got to make business, after all.
Mostly, you see commercially-manufactured cards on the shelves. Some people make their own (may be dangerous to use) and some people own collections of ancient cards.

The amount of aether in Actanthica is limited. There is a great amount of it, but it's limited like organism populations are limited. Using up too much in one place will cause that area's aether supply to be depleted, and this is known to happen in highly-populated areas where aether is usually very scarce, sometimes even forming aether-free "dead zones". Some organisms appear to be able to produce aether (speculation that this is merely the conversion of used aether back into a usable form, but due to the tricky nature of aether, this is not yet confirmed), but in such tiny amounts that it's barely enough for themselves. There have been attempts to farm these creatures, with about as much success as hydroponics has in providing Singapore with fresh vegetables. In other words, not enough to be self-sufficient with the current rate of consumption. Conversely, places uninhabited by humans and a great distance away from civilisation have huge amounts of aether. Explorers have been known to accidentally set things on fire.
Countries with high rates of aether consumption usually have deep holes drilled across their land in order to let the aether out from the deeper parts of the planet. Other places with large land areas and high aether concentrations have aether mines, where people mine rock rich in trapped aether. These rocks are usually placed at home or carried on the person in case of emergency.

Basically, the deal is- the more aether and intent you've got (having a good catalyst helps, too), the bigger the spells you can cast.

The study of magic is often divided into a number of areas, which is supposedly helpful in research, by making people specialize in certain fields.
It is known that some types of activities consume more aether and/or require more intent than others. The top five consumers, in descending order, are:
1. Temporal magics (extreme: slowing time to a crawl, for everyone)(this group includes making yourself become younger)(to popular knowledge, no one has been able to achieve this yet)
2. Creating life (extreme: creating a new species spread all over the planet)
3. Destroying life (extreme: wiping out an entire race/species)
4. Creating objects (extreme: the largest building you can imagine, out of thin aether)
5. Healing magics (extreme: completely healing and regenerating the limbs of a person who lost them ages ago and is now almost dead from wounds)
Most people avoid these things, or at least try to achieve the same effects indirectly. It's, for example, much easier to use magic to ignite an explosive near someone you want to kill, rather than using magic to kill the person directly. This is why hospitals still exist - they treat patients with normal methods, unless it's a great emergency. People rarely get lost limbs restored, and using magic to heal diseases is too imprecise for practise.

flora and fauna

The number of species currently in existence is greatly in flux at any point in time, much to the chagrin of biologists. The rate of change has currently slowed down though, what with there not being enough aether for little kids to wish entire species into existence. There wasn't that limit in ancient times, however, so a great number of fantastic creatures were created then, by people with overactive imaginations. Not all these creatures survived, but many of them do to this day. It's interesting to note that the flora and fauna in a region tend to be reflective of the culture of the human inhabitants, rather than the other way around. In addition, imagined organisms of ancient times usually don't spread far beyond the country's borders, as all countries, at one point in time, believed themselves to be the centre of the universe.

Leysing is primarily known for its mountain dragons; Egias for its birds and medicinal plants; Caspitrea's coastal inhabitants were particularly imaginative about krakens; Sarianica is quite unremarkable; Triatur's wildernesses are largely unexplored due to the great number of people not coming back from there.
But these are not representative of the country's zoological/botanical inhabitants (and perhaps some Sarianicans will disagree with me on their country's animals being unremarkable)...

Biologists have tentatively taken to recording every single organism they can find, even recently spawned ones.

As a random note: most of the time, it's easy to determine which organisms were created from aether - they need aether to survive (whether in biological processes inside the organism, or as a method of hunting, or...). They do have to go through the same intent-catalyst-aether requirements that humans do, except they are the catalysts.
Some organisms do not directly need the aether to survive- humans believing in their existence is already enough to provide sustenance, aether-wise. Humans spend the aether believing in them (small amounts, but it adds up), and they continue to exist. Classification with regards to ancient organisms tend to become very tricky.
As a second random note: anything that doesn't exist on Earth was created from aether. The biologists don't have that to work by, though.

geography

I actually drew up a map for Actanthica when I was bored in class.

It had details on the tectonic plates.

This is so much geek fodder. (Bio, Chem, Geog, what else?)

I am clearly missing the point here.

But anyway this bit is still being worked out, along with the details on the continents and countries' peoples. I'm still trying to turn it into MAGIC BATTLE!! fodder, which doesn't seem too successful so far...