Let’s take the Rhine Which goes from Switzerland to Netherlands. When and how did people start agreeing on giving-it the same name ? What about the alps going from southern France to Austria ? When did people agreed that it was the same mountain range ? And obviously what about the Gulf of Mexico ?
Typically starts by wiping out the people that had other names for it.
Consider the Thames river. Which one? Depends on how you read it out loud.
The “Temz” runs through London while the “Thayms” runs through somewhere in Connecticut.
They didn’t, a lot of shared places, or land features have different names in differsnt languages and different places. Agreements happen when something either didn’t have a name before, or when the name came from the past.
I find those funny, which just have the same word in another language for their name, like the River Avon or the Sahara Desert or even Torpenhow Hill which is “Hill Hill Hill Hill” in different languages.
You dont even need 2 languages, just a bottle of whisky.
‘Loch Lochy’ in Scotland.
There also are multiple rivers with danu root, that also means river: danube, donets, don. People aren’t exceptionally good at naming in general, so “hill” hill and “river” river. 😄
Also town town, mountain mountain, and my favourite, river hill mountain town town.
Wasn’t this “hill hill hill” hill name debunked by Tom Scott?
idk who that is, but it’s in wikipedia
Youtube Tom Scott, and then lose a few weeks of your life.
sry, i don’t use youtube. the clickbait suggestions anger me.
Lookup the East Sea, aka Sea of Japan. Or the Tagus river, aka Tejo river. There’s plenty other examples I can’t remember now. People don’t always agree on what to call things that cross borders. Usually we just agree to disagree as there’s no point arguing.
River Avon in the UK derives from Celtic word for river (Avon).
So its basically just River River
And as a result there are 8 or 9 rivers called “Avon” in the UK…
Major Major Major springs to mind.
For the most part, whomever the mapmakers happened to ask got to decide. Once it’s on an official map, it’s just gonna drown out any other opinions.
Several places in Norway have names that are spelled “wrong” according to locals, but changing it requires herculean efforts of bureaucracy.
I recognize that you are asking about European place names but how humans named things in North America might give some insight. A really great book on how places got their names in the US is Names on the Land: a historical account of place-naming in the United States by George R. Stewart (ISBN 978-1-59017-273-5).
This video talks about a US agency that’s responsible for doing exactly that
