Many places, even in the West, were named after unique characteristics. Language changed though. I studied in a German town called Paderborn (we lovingly called

Many places, even in the West, were named after unique characteristics. Language changed though. I studied in a German town called Paderborn (we lovingly called it "Paderboring" though). A river called Pader originates there and the word "born" is old German for source or spring. Many other German towns have similar names that make sense in old German or are derived from Latin names that were more descriptive but nobody understands anymore. In the USA there are many places like that as well and it's more obvious, since language hasn't changed since they were named. Ironically the landscape has due to human doing in many cases. Think Thousand Oaks, Walnut Creek, Mill Valley A sibling post makes the argument that descriptive names would eventually lose the descriptively as language changes. This is very much validated by the German names. However, that took hundreds if not over a thousand years in some cases.