- Descriptive: Rocky Mountains, Chicago (Smelly Onions in the language of the first inhabitants).
- Associative: Mill River (a mill was on the river), Springfield
- Incident Names: Battle Creek, Bloody Ridge, Cut and Shoot
- Possessive Names: Castro Valley, Pittsburgh
- Commemorative (commemorating someone well-known or in honor of a famous person): St Louis, San Jacinto, Houston, Seattle (named after Chief Seattle), Austin, Pennsylvania (Penn’s Woods), Illinois (after the Illini
Indians) - Commendatory (praising): Pleasant Valley, Greenland
- Manufactured (made up names): Tesnus (Sunset spelled backwards), Reklaw (Walker spelled backwards) Iraan (Ira and Ann name the town after each other)
- Mistaken (historic errors in identification or translation): West Indies (not west of the Indies and not the Indies)
- Shift Names (relocated names or names from settler’s homeland): Athens (Greece and Texas), Palestine (Middle East and Texas), New Mexico (settlers from Mexico named their new home after their previous home),New England
- Folk etymology – a false meaning is extracted from a name based on its structure or sounds. Thus, the toponym of Hellespont was explained by Greek poets as being named after Helle, daughter of Athamas, who drowned here as she crossed it with her brother Phrixus on a flying golden ram. The name, however, most likely is derived from an older language, such as Pelasgian, and probably meant “good port”.
Leave a Reply