There is (or was) a “Frank’s Folly” in Downingtown PA. “Frank” was a distant cousin. I understand this one was in reference to foolishness.
A bluff can be a steep cliff.
I know; hence the ‘likewise’.
Well then, Pikes Peak could mean his, Mr. Pikes, peak achievement not the top of the mountain.
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia was originally Harper’s Ferry until it was changed in 1891
Hell’s Kitchen?
A kitchen is a tangible thing.
We’re far afield from the OP.
But as a comparison, Wiki- Saint Peters Missouri has never properly had an apostrophe.
Maybe it should have. But it didn’t.
There’s a small but famous city in Israel called Zichron Yaakov. The word Zichron can mean either “Memory”, “Remembrance” or “Memorial”, so it’s possible to translate the name of the place as “Jacob’s Memory”.
And Hell isn’t a person. (Though it is other people.)
Of we turn it around to Kitchen’s Hell maybe it qualifies as [noun nebulous-adjective].
There’s a 5000-some feet high peak overlooking Death Valley called Dante’s View.
Like wanderlust.
Reid’s Mistake is a name given to a headland and latterly a geological formation, north of Sydney. Named for a mistaken identification of a previously unmapped river mouth as the entrance to the Hunter River, the name has kicked around in various forms since the early 1800s.
Journo Mark Whittaker wrote a very good book about travelling around Australian place names that might qualify - The Road to Mount Buggery: A Journey Through the Curiously Named Places of Australia, which includes places like Lake Disappointment, Mount Unapproachable and Point Torment.
There’s also, famously, False Bay near Cape Town, named for the many ships which mistakenly sailed into it, believing it was Table Bay and they had already rounded the Cape of Good Hope. No Name of a person associated with it, though.
Would that go for Land’s End, or was there no Mr. Land? ![]()
There are three villages in Newfoundland & Labrador, with names that are similar to this theme: Heart’s Desire, Heart’s Delight, and Heart’s Content.
The villages are all on Trinity Bay, fairly close together. It’s not known how the names arose.
The neighborhood of Prides Crossing (formerly Pride’s Crossing) in Beverly, Massachusetts was in fact named for a Mr. Pride.
Also in NL is Joe Batt’s Arm. There are several other places in the province named after people, including Arnold’s Cove, Cook’s Harbour (named after Captain James Cook), Ming’s Bight, and Cox’s Cove. The capital, St. John’s–note the apostrophe–is named after, well, St. John. It is not clear who or what Dildo, Dildo Island, and Dildo’s Arm were named after.
In British Columbia, there is Anarchist Mountain, named after John Haywood.
The English and German words are certainly cognates, but the German word doesn’t have the sexual connotations that its English equivalent has.
I don’t think it always has sexual connotations in English either, for example in The Silmarillion I seem to remember that various characters have “lust in their hearts” or something like that for the titular jewels.