like town names are very unique; you probably couldn’t find the same 2 towns next to each other very often

but mark steve chris hannah claire laura etc are all very common across the anglosphere

  • Lvxferre
    4•1 year ago

    It’s a bunch of factors. Other posters highlighted some. Others are:

    • You’re far more likely to name a person after another than a town after another. (Exceptions happen, I know.)
    • Identical personal names for people can be disambiguated with patronymics and surnames, but usually there isn’t much of that for towns, except maybe “in [insert the name of the country controlling that city]”.
    • At least in Abrahamic religions, the name also plays a role to highlight that the person is supposed to follow that religion.
    • Names follow trends, People tend to die rather quickly, so you don’t see often the “old” trends. In the meantime that town might follow some town-naming trend from 300y ago.
    • lol3droflxp
      1•1 year ago

      Regarding point 1, in New England at least you can visit half of Europe within a few hours of driving if you go by town names.

      • Lvxferre
        1•1 year ago

        Yup, there are exceptions, like placenames named after other placenames, even in the old world. (Cartagena being named after Carthago, England [indirectly] after Anglia, even Byzantium was shortly called Roma Nova by Constantine.) Even then, those are more like exceptions, not the rule.