To begin, there are these gods in the universe that fight/argue with each other because nothing was named yet, either because the universe or the world was just created. So they create a boy/prince (or assign a boy) for the task of naming everything in the universe/world. So the boy goes on an adventures – traveling to many places with a method of travel I cannot seem to recall – assigning names to everything. It is similar to Le Petit Prince (Little Prince) in the fact that the boy does a lot of traveling to distant places (from what I remember). However, I know for sure it was NOT the Little Prince!
I’m pretty sure the boy had a name, the writer could have had influence from foreign stories/myths/legends (Indian/Arabic/possibly Greek?), so the names might have been unusual/unique. Or, there could have been no foreign influence and the names were just general fantasy/mythological-influenced. That part I’m not entirely sure, but it’s just one other factor to throw out there just in case.
Once again, the boy in the story I am referring to was assigned by creator gods the task of naming things. I believe the book had a limited edition printing from the 80s/90s that’s why its very hard to track down.
The copy I had was a hardback *may* have been a dust-jacket, but it was off-white and thick, (roughly 5/5.5 x 8″ dimensions, about .5″ thick). On the cover featured an image of the boy looking down on a cloud, with stars and the moon I think. Unfortunately, that’s all I can remember. If any title comes to mind please post it I will be incredibly thankful.
Doubt this is your book, but the part about a boy being sent to name things reminds me of Michael Ende’s “Neverending Story”. In the mysterious land of Fantastica, which is contained in an ancient book, the boy Atreyu is sent by powerful mages to go find a hero who will give their country’s Empress a name, one reason their world is dying. He goes and visits several strange lands and has many adventures, which gets the attention of Bastian Bux, a lonely boy from our world who is reading the story, and called into the book to save their homeland. Bastian goes on several journeys of his own within Fantastica, naming (and possibly creating) more places and confronting both a witch and his own fears, before returning to his own home.
I doubt this is your book, but hope it helps.
Thank you for the suggestion, it sounds close – unfortunately, I don’t think that is the book. The story in question seems to be inspired by a creation myth in that the creator(s) (gods/deities) are assigning a creation (boy) the task of naming parts of the creation, like with Adam in the book of Genesis.
Also, I began searching many variations of the ‘Neverending story’ book covers, and nothing seemed to resonate. But again, thank you for the suggestion!