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Comment by ehmmmmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

Agree, although as a Mountain View resident I'm pretty disgruntled that there is neither mountain nor view here. A town like Mammoth Lakes, CA would be a better candidate to deserve the name "Mountain View".

Jokes aside there are places in the world that name themselves much more intuitively like you described.

Beijing = northern capital

Nanjing = southern capital

Shanghai = on the sea

Hong Kong = fragrant harbor

Xi'an = western peace

Tokyo = eastern capital

Taipei = north Tai

Tainan = south Tai

Taichung = middle Tai

Taitung = east Tai

Shandong = east mountains

Shanxi = west mountains etc.

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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.

Case in point: Pontefract*

The advantage of descriptive names is that the more you know, the more you can infer despite them being far removed from current language. On the other hand if there isn't a good candidate for a descriptive name, a surname-shaped nonce is better than a misnomer.

* Latin for Broken Bridge

Don't forget Lone Pine Mall!

https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Twin_Pines_Mall

In the same vein, Seoul = "capital". It used to be a correct expression to say "the Seoul of North Korea is Pyongyang," in Korean. These days I guess it will draw weird looks.

Word2Vec sees no problem with this.

there are places in the world that name themselves much more intuitively

Plenty of similar examples in the United States. West Gate, South Park, Big Ugly Creek. Sometimes it doesn't work out, like how South Charleston, West Virginia is northwest of Charleston.

Related, you can learn a lot about the history of a place by studying maps.

Hartford, New York, Throggs Neck, Kill Van Kill, Schuylkill, Gravesend, Brooklyn, The Bronx, all gain extra meaning if you know a little bit of history.

> Taipei = north Tai

> Tainan = south Tai

> Taichung = middle Tai

> Taitung = east Tai

> Shandong = east mountains

> Shanxi = west mountains etc.

Not quite. Shandong = "east of the mountain(s)", not "the mountains in the east", and similarly for the others. Note how in Shandong, dong comes second, whereas in Beijing, the north capital, bei comes first.

Shanghai is a weird one. "On the sea" should be haishang. 上海 in another context should mean something like "get onto the sea".

> 上海 in another context should mean something like "get onto the sea".

Wait, does that mean that "shanghaiing" someone is actually a literal description rather than just a reference to a prototypical destination?

Shanghai 伤害 is a Chinese verb meaning "hurt". Would that mean that "shanghaiing" someone is "actually" a euphemistic reference to the injury suffered by enslaved sailors?

It's an English word; it's got nothing to do with Chinese.

I was asking after the etymology, actually; were whoever coined the term aware of the meaning in Chinese? (Compare eg pagerank or bakers' chocolate elsewhere in thread - named after a proper noun, but the term as used is a description - but in this case it would be the reverse - named after a description, but the term as used references a proper noun.) Rereading I agree that wasn't obvious, though.

In any case, Shanghai is not the only seaside city and there are other porta as fragrant ad Hong Kong‘s.

Shanghai is the biggest seaside city and pretty sure Hong Kong for a long time was the principal port (wrt China, of course).

> Shanghai is the biggest seaside city

The name is much older than the size.

I'm guessing that at that point it was also the most notable one, or notable for the fact it was in the ses.

Definitely not; Fujian is the area with the strongest historical involvement with the sea.

Most suburban areas will probably have been named to attract people buying property, rather than for any real reason otherwise.

Perhaps the biggest historical example of this is Greenland, whose name is said to have been chosen to attract more settlers to a place that is very cold in reality. (The corresponding bit that people like to tell, in which Iceland had its name sabotaged to make Greenland more attractive, is not based in reality.)

You just have to get high enough in Mountain View to see the mountains. I was walking along Steven's Creek Trail, and there was a certain point where I could see mountains in all 4 directions (north, south, east, west).

Mountain View was named that way because if you look West you will see the Black Mountain, part of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

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