Town, city and village name generator

A shaw is a strip of woodland at the edge of a field. Put nettles in it and you have a village nobody chose to live in so much as ended up in.

A garth is an enclosure, so this one names the field before it names the houses. Good for a farming hamlet where the crop still decides what everybody does in August.

The qualifier is the story: this Clayton belonged to a bishop and the other one did not. Heavy soil, a church too large for the population, and old resentments.

Open ground with birds over it and very little shelter. Two syllables that sound windy, which suits an upland hamlet of grey stone and short walls.

A brock is a badger and a den is a wooded valley. It reads as a hollow in the trees where a track goes in and only one lane comes out.

Nether means the lower of two. The by ending is Danish, so this is a village in the old northern half of England with a holly hedge somebody kept.

Sedge grows where the water sits. A name that tells you the ground is wet before you have unpacked, and that the bank is the only dry part of it.

The parish saint comes after the place in this pattern, which is what makes it read as English rather than Spanish. It marks a village with two churches in its past.

Furze is gorse, which grows on poor land, and Little says there is a bigger one down the road doing better. A perfect name for somewhere overlooked.

A stow is a holy place or a meeting place. With an orchard word in front it comes out gentle, which is right for a village whose only event is a fair.

Two railway lines and an ore seam, and the name admits both. Junction towns in fiction are useful because everybody passing through has somewhere else to be.

A bend is a curve in a river, and a kestrel hangs still over open ground. The pair reads as a small town with one main street following the water.

Flats means level ground, which in a name usually means the good land was taken and this was what was left. Hickory keeps it southern and wooded.

The ville ending is nineteenth century American and slightly hopeful, as if the founder expected more of it. Birch makes it northern, cold and paper thin.

An English suffix on an American plant word, which is exactly what happened to thousands of real towns. Dairy country, flat roads and a co-operative that runs everything.

Plural mills means the water was worked hard. A town that once had money, kept the buildings and lost the industry, which is a whole setting in two words.

Corners is a crossroads that grew a store. Mesquite pins it to dry southwestern country where the tree is a weed and the shade is still worth having.

Rapids stop a boat, so a town appears where the cargo has to come off the water. The otter softens a name that is otherwise all commerce.

A basin is a bowl of land that collects everything, water and people included. Laurel gives it the warm south, and a suggestion of nothing draining away quickly.

A fork is where two rivers or two roads meet and argue. Granite makes the ground unforgiving, so this is a quarry town with a hard reputation.

A burgh was walled and had the right to hold a market. Grange is a monastic farm, so the city grew out of church land and never quite stopped saying so.

Half medieval, half frontier, which is the sound of a city that changed hands and kept both names. The abbey is a ruin in a park by now.

A port with a temple district is a city with foreign money in it. Two hard syllables that fit a working waterfront rather than a capital.

The plainest possible city name and the most honest one. Somewhere that made metal, grew fast, blackened its own buildings and is now cleaning them.

The chester ending means a Roman fort was here first, so the city has two thousand years of foundations and a road that will not go straight.

Naming the harbour before the place is what ports do. Linden is a lime tree, which gives an industrial word an avenue and a civic square to sit on.

Cape puts it on a headland with weather coming at it from three sides. A bittern is a marsh bird, so there are wetlands behind the docks.

A hampton is a home settlement on a bend or a flood plain. This one has spread far past that bend and kept the small word for the whole city.

Fortress plus cathedral, the two powers that founded most old European cities and then spent centuries irritating one another. The name still has both in it.

Cities in mountains are either mining or money, and the aspen suggests the second. Thin air, expensive streets and a season that decides the year.

A mouth name puts the town at an estuary where the tide runs both ways. Terns are noisy and coastal, so the name carries the sound of the place with it.

The ferry is the reason anyone stopped here, and the salt is what they carried. A name for a crossing town that resents the bridge somebody finally built.

A quay is deep water you can tie up against, so this is a working harbour rather than a beach. Oysters mean shallow beds, money and a long argument about who owns them.

A head is a headland and a beacon is what you light on it. The whole name is a warning system, which suits a town whose economy is other people wrecking.

A point sticks out into the water and catches everything the weather brings. A grebe is a diving bird, so the water here is sheltered and deep.

Shingle is the coarse stuff between sand and rock, and it means you would rather not walk this beach barefoot. A blunt, cold, northern seaside name.

A holm is a small island or a piece of raised ground in a marsh. Put a keel in front and it becomes somewhere boats are built as well as moored.

A dock is where cargo is worked rather than where boats are simply tied up. Cobbles say the town is old and steep and hard on a loaded cart.

The on the river form is how English market towns distinguish themselves from the other place with the same name. Everything about it says inland water, not sea.

A cove is a bite out of the coast big enough for a dozen boats and no more. The name is soft on both halves, which fits a village that fishes rather than trades.

Crook is a bend or a shepherd staff and mire is bad ground. Together they name a village built on the only firm part of a wetland, badly.

A drift is a track cattle are driven along. Bleak takes any comfort out of it, so this is a stopping point on a road rather than a place anybody chose.

A roost is where something settles for the night, which makes it a lovely word for a village of one inn. Quiet, watchful and awake at the wrong hours.

A delve is a dug working. Hemlock is poison. The pair suggests a mining hamlet with something in the water and a reason nobody stays two seasons.

A hearth is the centre of a house and the reason a settlement exists at all. Putting a crone at it gives the village one authority and it is not the lord.

A ditch was the first defence anybody dug, long before walls. Gnarl makes the wood around it old and difficult, which is how the village has stayed unbothered.

A thicket you cannot ride through is worth more than a wall. This is a woodland village that is hard to find on purpose and does not want the road improved.

A snare is a trap set for something small. The name is a warning left by whoever named the place, and warnings that survive are usually earned.

Wane is the moon going out and a dell is a small wooded valley. The Lower says there is an Upper, which is almost always where the trouble came from.

A scarp is a steep face of rock. Carve something on it and the village is named after writing nobody living can read, which is the best hook a hamlet can have.