About wild west town names
Terrain words like ridge, gorge, and plains close out most results, from compact "Stagpeaks" to grimmer coinages like "Tombplains" and "Cruelty ridge". The lowercase second words mimic how frontier settlements got named in a hurry, by whoever filed the claim first. These fit westerns, weird west campaigns, and any dusty stop where the sheriff is also the undertaker.
How wild west town names are built
Names join a prefix to a suffix at a fragment boundary: the single pattern pairs one of 232 prefixes with one of 74 suffixes. Battlement + vista gives Battlement vista, Lost + ford gives Lost ford, and Rose + water gives Rose water. Prefixes carry a trailing space, which is why results read as two words with a lowercase suffix.
Battlement vista
Battlement (prefix, trailing space) + vista (suffix)
Bluewater ford
Bluewater (prefix, trailing space) + ford (suffix)
Rose water
Rose (prefix, trailing space) + water (suffix)
Sourced from GeoNames English spellings (CC BY 4.0); English Wikipedia category memberships (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Naming notes
Two banks, a 232-entry prefix bank and a 74-entry suffix bank, glue into one form. The prefix's trailing space keeps results as spaced two-word names with a lowercase second half. Cluster towns sharing a suffix (several ford forms, several grove forms) to map a believable frontier county.
Questions about wild west town names
- How are these names assembled?
- A single prefix-plus-suffix pattern glues one of 232 prefixes to one of 74 suffixes. Prefixes end in a space, so results read as two words with a lowercase suffix.
- Why are the results two words?
- Prefix-bank entries carry a trailing space, so when joined to a suffix they read as two words with a lowercase second half, like Lost ford or Rose water.
- How do I map a frontier county?
- Cluster towns sharing a suffix: several ford forms along a river, several grove and hill forms in the uplands, so the region reads as one settled territory.