DECISION-PROCESS involved in rendering a name to a phenomenon, whether it be a physical feature like a plant, lake, or mountain, or whether man-made constructs like surnames, buildings, or towns, has fascinated students in many disciplines.This process is of particular interest when the names given have religious, mystical, or philosophical connotations.Although the reason why a town was named Damascus, Sodom, Hope, Faith, or St.Joseph may be unique for each case, a study of the spatial arrangement of religious town names can often aid in furthering the understanding of population migrations of certain groups, their settlement patterns, and their impact on the social history of an area.Numerous studies in various disciplines have been concerned with names or words in an areal context.! Geographers have made noteworthy contributions along these lines. 2There has, neverthe-1 For example, E. Wallace McMullen, "The Term Prairie in the United States,"
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