Place Names

Names taken from somewhere on a map. The place usually got its own name from a person, a landscape feature or a language nobody there speaks any more, so the meaning is two removes away.

Rankings for

106 names, most popular first in the United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Devon Devon is the English county, named for the Dumnonii — a Celtic people whose own name may mean the deep ones, possibly referring to mining.
Unisex English #1,028 in US
Kelvin Kelvin is the only name on this site that is also an SI unit, and the order runs river to man to measurement — a Glasgow river gave a physicist his title, and the title was given to the scale of absolute temperature.
Boy Scottish #1,036 in US
Trenton Trenton means Trent's town, and the Trent is a man rather than the English river — William Trent bought the land in 1714, and the New Jersey city was named for him, not for the water.
Boy American #1,040 in US
Whitney Whitney was already climbing before Whitney Houston, and the debut album accelerated it rather than starting it — 1,632 births in 1982, 2,488 by 1984, then 4,068 in 1985 and 9,781 in 1986.
Girl English #1,044 in US
Lorraine Lorraine is a girl's name from the French region, whose own name means the kingdom of Lothair — a Frankish king's realm that was carved out of Charlemagne's empire and slowly disappeared.
Girl French #1,045 in US
Rodney Rodney is a boy's name from an English place name, and its rise as a given name follows a single admiral — George Rodney, who broke the French line at the Saintes in 1782.
Boy English #1,091 in US
Sharon Sharon is a girl's name taken from a place rather than a person — the fertile coastal plain of Sharon in Israel, known from the rose of Sharon in the Song of Songs.
Girl Hebrew #1,252 in US
Hayley Hayley is a girl's name from an English place name meaning "hay clearing," and it became a girl's name because of one child actress.
Girl English #1,257 in US
Lorena Lorena is a place before it is a person — Lorraine is the land of Lothar, a Frankish king whose kingdom was carved out of Charlemagne's empire and named after him directly.
Girl Spanish #1,293 in US
Trent Trent means the trespasser, and it is a warning rather than a description — the English river was named for its habit of flooding across its banks and cutting new channels.
Boy English #1,341 in US
Clifford Clifford is a boy's name from an English place name meaning a ford by a cliff — a river crossing below a steep bank.
Boy English #1,352 in US
Lindsey Lindsey is a girl's name from a district of Lincolnshire, and it originally meant an island — Lindsey was cut off by marsh and river, so the wetland reading and the island reading describe the same place.
Girl English #1,371 in US
Perry Perry means at the pear tree, from an English place name — and it is reviving, at 1,373rd in the United States and 1,681st in England and Wales.
Boy English #1,373 in US
Vernon Vernon is a Norman place name meaning a place of alders, from a Gaulish word — so a French town gave England a surname that America turned into a first name, three languages deep.
Boy French #1,383 in US
Tyrone Tyrone means Eoghan's land, an Irish county, and it reached American use almost entirely through one actor — Tyrone Power, whose grandfather took the name from the county his family came from.
Boy Irish #1,391 in US
Milton Milton means the mill settlement, and there is a second and quite separate source meaning the middle settlement — two entirely different Old English place names that ended up producing exactly the same modern spelling.
Boy English #1,440 in US
Clarence Clarence is a boy's name taken from an English dukedom, itself named for a Suffolk town.
Boy English #1,501 in US
Brent Brent means burned land, from ground cleared by fire — a place name recording a specific agricultural practice rather than a hill or a holy site, which are the two readings usually offered for it.
Boy English #1,510 in US
Shirley Shirley is a girl's name from an English place name meaning bright clearing, and it was a boys' name until Charlotte Brontë used it for a heroine in 1849.
Girl English #1,583 in US
Alton Alton means the settlement at the river's source, and that is more specific than the old town reading usually given — the Old English element is a spring or wellhead, not age.
Boy English #1,605 in US
Dixie Dixie names the American South and nobody knows why — the leading account is a French ten-dollar note printed dix in Louisiana, and the rival is the Mason-Dixon line.
Girl American #1,605 in US
Lester Lester means from Leicester, and the spelling is the honest one — Leicester has been pronounced LES-ter for centuries, so the surname simply wrote down what people had been saying to each other all along.
Boy English #1,636 in US
Kent Kent is the oldest recorded place name in England — Cantium appears in Greek writing before the Roman invasion, and its meaning was already uncertain to the Romans who wrote it down.
Boy English #1,658 in US
Geneva Geneva is not named after the Swiss city — it is a form of Genevieve, whose own meaning is unsettled, and the city's name comes from a Celtic word for a bend or estuary entirely separately.
Girl English #1,660 in US
Clinton Clinton means the settlement on the hill, from an English place name — and the two American presidents who carried it did so by adoption and by surname, not by descent from the place.
Boy English #1,740 in US
Irving Irving names a Scottish river valley, and it reached American use largely through one writer — Washington Irving, who gave English both Rip Van Winkle and the nickname Gotham for New York.
Boy Scottish #1,789 in US
Clifton Clifton means the settlement by the cliff, and it is the same first element as Clifford — one describes a ford below the cliff and the other the farm on top of it.
Boy English #1,916 in US
Irvin Irvin names a Scottish river valley, and the green water reading describes the water rather than the banks — Brittonic river names usually record color or behavior, not the land beside them.
Boy Scottish #1,936 in US
Shannon Shannon is a name from Ireland's longest river, and it is 86 percent female on record.
Unisex Irish #2,397 in US
Leyton Leyton is a boy's name of English origin meaning "settlement on the River Lea."
Boy English #2,425 in US
Kerry Kerry is 53 percent female on record — the fourth-closest to an even split on this site, behind only Emerson, Riley and Jackie.
Unisex Irish #2,454 in US
Iona Iona is a girl's name taken from the Hebridean island where Columba founded his monastery — and the island's name exists because a medieval scribe misread a letter.
Girl Scottish #2,684 in US
Carlton Carlton means the settlement of the free peasants, and the word for those peasants became an insult — ceorl gave English churl and churlish, so the name preserves a class that the language later turned against.
Boy English #2,898 in US
Prescott Prescott is a boy's name of English origin meaning "priest's cottage," from the Old English preost and cot.
Boy English #2,985 in US
Staten Staten is a rare American boy's name best known from Staten Island, New York.
Boy Dutch #4,040 in US
Rochelle Rochelle means little rock, and it is a place rather than a person — La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast was a Huguenot stronghold, and the name reached English through the town rather than any saint.
Girl French #4,578 in US
Lesley Lesley is the Scottish spelling and Scotland proves it — a peak of 341 births there in 1974, far above what the country's size would predict against an American high of 981.
Unisex Scottish #4,654 in US
Brittney Brittney means from Brittany, and Brittany means from Britain — so the name records Britons who fled to France, making it a British name that came home by way of Normandy and a respelling.
Girl American #5,145 in US
Shelly Shelly means a clearing on a ledge, from an English place name — and it has nothing to do with shells, which is the reading most people assume and no source supports.
Girl English #5,831 in US
Kimberley Kimberley is named for a woman — the English place name behind it is Cyneburg's clearing, and Cyneburg was a seventh-century Mercian princess, so the name reaches modern use through her land rather than a man's.
Girl English #5,868 in US
Rhonda Rhonda is a girl's name from a Welsh river valley, and the great spear reading usually given for it is wrong — the Rhondda is named for its own noisiness, not for a weapon.
Girl Welsh #6,125 in US
Chantal Chantal is a girl's name from an Occitan word for a stone or boulder, taken from a French place name — the singing reading everyone gives it comes from the French chanter and is wrong.
Girl French #6,227 in US
Shelley Shelley means a clearing on a ledge, and it has nothing to do with shells — the poet's surname records a patch of high ground in Suffolk or Sussex, not anything from a beach.
Girl English #8,135 in US
Tracey Tracey is a Norman place name, not an Irish one — it comes from Tracy in Normandy, and the warrior reading widely given for it has no basis in the French original at all.
Girl French #8,308 in US
Alberta Alberta means noble and bright, and a Canadian province carries it — Alberta was named for Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, whose full name was Louise Caroline Alberta.
Girl Germanic #10,069 in US
Clodagh Clodagh is a girl's name of Irish origin taken from the River Clodiagh in County Tipperary.
Girl Irish #10,345 in US
Lydie Lydie names a kingdom, and that kingdom invented money — Lydia struck the world's first coins in the seventh century BC, and its last king Croesus is still a byword for wealth.
Girl French #12,128 in US
Arran Arran is a boy's name taken from the Scottish island in the Firth of Clyde, whose own name is old enough that its meaning is no longer recoverable.
Boy Scottish #12,354 in US

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