Toponym Word Order

No, there is no rule.

A “toponym” is a place name. It often consists of a honorific (“Lake”, “Mount”, “River”) and a proper name (“Superior”, “Everest”, “Amazon”).

The order of honorific/name varies. Consider:

• Lake Michigan
• Great Salt Lake

Or:

• River Thames
• Amazon River

After a fair amount of searching, I’ve determined that there’s no accepted rule. The order the words appear in is based entirely on oral tradition and some regional preferences (example: in the UK, “river” often comes before the name, whereas in the United States, this is the opposite).

I did find some claims that the order depends on if the place is named for something specific, but the claims went either way – some put the honorific before or after in these situations.

Others claimed it had to do with syllable count. One or two syllables meant the honorific came first. But, again, this was discounted by numerous examples.

One other claim was that – in the claimant’s particular geographic region – “Lake” was used before the name for bodies of water over a certain number of acres, and after the name for smaller lakes. (Note: this example was for lakes, specifically.)

In the end, I could find no general rule, and multiple resources explicitly stated that there was no rule.

Why I Looked It Up

A friend asked.