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

39 names, uncommon — 100 to 499 a year, in the United States

Very Rare Rare Uncommon

Girls Boys Unisex

Shelby Shelby is a girl's name from an English place name of Norse formation meaning a willow farm.
Girl English 485 in 2025
Trevor Trevor is a Welsh place name meaning big settlement, and the first element is the tre that begins a great many Cornish and Welsh place names — Tregaron, Trelawney, Treharris and several hundred others besides.
Boy Welsh 400 in 2025
Lee Lee is a name from the Old English word for a woodland clearing, and it is one of the most productive elements in English place names — the ending of Ashley, Bradley, Shirley and Beverly.
Unisex English 387 in 2025
Clyde Clyde took nothing from Bonnie and Clyde.
Boy Scottish 350 in 2025
Bethany Bethany is a village outside Jerusalem, and its meaning is contested — house of figs and house of the poor are both proposed.
Girl Hebrew 362 in 2025
Keith Keith is a boy's name from a Scottish place name, probably from a Brittonic word for a wood.
Boy Scottish 311 in 2025
Kelsey Kelsey is a girl's name from an English place name, and its two proposed meanings — ship's victory and Cenel's island — have nothing in common.
Girl English 349 in 2025
Tara Tara is a girl's name from the hill in County Meath where the High Kings were inaugurated, and its meaning is a place of assembly.
Girl Irish 322 in 2025
Chelsea Chelsea is a girl's name from a London district whose name means chalk landing place — a wharf where chalk was unloaded from boats on the Thames.
Girl English 319 in 2025
Haley Haley means hay meadow, from an English place name.
Girl English 314 in 2025
Cheyenne Cheyenne is not the Cheyenne people's own name for themselves — it is a Sioux word meaning red speakers, applied from outside.
Girl Native American 285 in 2025
Brittany Brittany is a girl's name taken from the French region, which is named for British settlers who crossed the Channel in late antiquity.
Girl English 281 in 2025
Byron Byron means at the cattle sheds — a working place name that became shorthand for romantic poetry, which is a longer journey than most names make.
Boy English 233 in 2025
Beverly Beverly is a name from an English town meaning beaver stream, and it began as a boys' name before crossing decisively to girls.
Girl English 246 in 2025
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 260 in 2025
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 214 in 2025
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 213 in 2025
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 251 in 2025
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 238 in 2025
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 197 in 2025
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 179 in 2025
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 179 in 2025
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 173 in 2025
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 142 in 2025
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 139 in 2025
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 161 in 2025
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 218 in 2025
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 133 in 2025
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 132 in 2025
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 125 in 2025
Clarence Clarence is a boy's name taken from an English dukedom, itself named for a Suffolk town.
Boy English 117 in 2025
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 116 in 2025
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 133 in 2025
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 106 in 2025
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 130 in 2025
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 103 in 2025
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 101 in 2025
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 125 in 2025
Shannon Shannon is a name from Ireland's longest river, and it is 86 percent female on record.
Unisex Irish 116 in 2025

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