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Message: <blockquote data-quote="haakon1" data-source="post: 7653193" data-attributes="member: 25619">For names, I find it helps for have lived in places with English-origin place names and just name things plainly.  In my case, that was New York, New England, actual England, and Washington State.To me, a lot of good place names are actually DESCRIPTIVE and tell you something about the place right from the name.  Whether the name comes first or the "reason for being" doesn't much matter, but both being related helps a lot.Examples:From New York:-- Pound Ridge (my hometown) -- it's a hilly, wooded place, where animals were kept-- Indian Hill -- a hill with an Indian burial ground at the base-- Hardscrabble Road -- you can tell this was not good farm country-- Leatherman's Cave -- a cave where an itinerant leatherworker camped when in town-- Breakneck Ridge-- Bear Mountain-- Salt Point (where the Hudson changes from a salt water fjord-like inlet to fresh water river valley)-- West Point -- a steep river bluff above the HudsonFrom merry old England:-- Oxford -- a town at major river crossing (on the Thames)-- Cambridge -- a town at a bridge over the Cam river-- Stamford -- you get the idea-- Downton Abbey (fictional) -- a former abbey, no doubt destroyed by Henry VIII, near a village (ton) a Down (heathland)From Washington State:-- Friday Harbor -- a port town named after a native Hawaiian sailor who settled there,  Either his name was translated from Hawaiian, or more likely he was nicknamed Friday, after the character in Robin Crusoe (published a century before he was born)-- Useless Bay -- a bay that's too shallow and exposed to the wind to be a good roadstead-- Deception Pass -- an inlet between rocky islands that's dangerous because of the swift currents-- Port Townsend -- a town at the end of a peninsula (actually named after a person)-- Startup -- a town on the road leading up to a mountain pass-- Index -- a town on the same road, near Mount Index, a mountain that looks like an index finger stuck up</blockquote>

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