Location Theme Naming

Location Theme Naming is just what it sounds like - a group of characters all named after places. Like Edible Theme Naming, this tends to be done in less serious works, because a large group of people all named after locations is faintly ridiculous.

Characters whose names follow this theme tend to be named after locations in one area, such as streets in New York or restaurants in Tokyo. In some cases, different groups will be named after locations in different parts of the world, so one might end up with, say, a group of people named after Italian rivers fighting a group named after German towns.

A variant is to name characters after directions, such as up/down/left/right or north/south/east/west. This tends to be more common in Japanese works.

Examples of Location Theme Naming include:

Anime and Manga

• In Excel Saga, the members of ACROSS are named for hotel chains, and most everyone else is named for neighborhoods in the city of Fukuoka ("F City, F Prefecture" in which the anime takes place, even if the manga keeps it as "Fukuoka, Fukuoka"). "ACROSS" itself is named after a convention center (one translator said it was like a New York based cult being named "Javits").
• The main band of characters in Gurren Lagann are named for directions Kamina (above/up), Simon/Shimon (below/under), Yoko (beside), Nia (a play on near), and Rosshiu (an anagram of ushiro, behind). Darry and Gimmy use Theme Twin Naming to fit nicely into this. (Dari = hidari, or left, Gimi = migi, or right.) All of these relate to some parts of the main band's personality: Simon looks up to Kamina, Kamina sees Simon as something to help improve himself, Yoko is loyal, Nia is close, Rosshiu is somewhat untrustworthy, and Darry/Gimmy are siblings.
• The four main girls of Ichigo 100% are named after the four cardinal directions: Toujou Aya (tou=East), Kitaouji Satsuki (kita=North), Nishino Tsukasa (nishi=West), and Minamoto Yui (minami=South). And, of course, the main character, Manaka Junpei (naka=middle).
• Similar to the Ichigo 100% example, the characters of Kanamemo make use of the cardinal direction theme name motif. There's Hinata Azuma (east), Haruka Nishida (west), Yume Kitaoka (north), Yuuki Minami (south) and Kana Nakamachi (center). Their boss, Saki Amano has the character for "sky" in her name, since she is above them all.
• The family of Sanosuke Sagara from Rurouni Kenshin has names that contain kanji relating to directions: Sanosuke has in his name the kanji for "left" (read as "sa" in this compound or "hidari" when alone), his sister Uki the one for "right" (u/ migi), his little brother Outa the one for "center" (ou), his father Kamishimoemon has both "up" (kami/ ue) and "down" (shimo/ shita) and the name of his mother Naname means "diagonal".
• Pretty much every character of note in Tenchi Muyo!. To begin with, almost all the names initially came from locations and landmarks in the Okayama area. But there are additional meanings within them depending on what variety of Japanese is used to translate them.
• The girls of Tokyo Mew Mew are all named after plants or desserts, and their last names follow the pattern of Colour Place (Momomiya = Peach Shrine, Midorikawa = Green River, etc.)
• The four denizens of Labyrinth from Fresh Pretty Cure are each named for directions: Eas, Wester, Souler, and Northa. Their human alter egos use the Japanese word for the directions as their last names (Setsuna Higashi, Hayato Nishi, Shun Minami, and Nayuta Kita).
  • Similarly, Hibiki and Kanade's last names have the characters for, respectively, "North" (Houjou) and "South" (Minamino), reflecting their conflicting personalities. Meanwhile, two supporting characters named Waon and Seika have "West" and "East" respectively (Nishijima and Higashiyama).
• Most of the characters in Kamichama Karin have surnames corresponding to a train line or station (Hanazono, KujyouKujo, Karasuma, etc.)

Comics

• In a Justice League Europe story written by Greg Weisman, the team meet a group of familiar-looking Gargoyles at Notre Dame Cathedral. They are, of course, all named after locations in Paris, except for the leader, Behemoth.

Film

• In Cube, all the characters are named after prisons, complete with character traits modeled after the prisons'. Kazan (the autistic man) is a disorganized prison. Rennes (the "mentor") pioneered many of today's prison policies. Quentin (the policeman) is known for brutality. Holloway is a women's prison. Alderson is a prison where isolation is a common punishment. Leavenworth runs on a rigid set of rules (Leaven's mathematics), and the new prison is corporately owned and built (Worth, hired as an architect).
• Lampshaded in Forrest Gump. Forrest's Army buddies in Vietnam were Dallas, Phoenix and Brooklyn. None of them came from the city they were named after.
• The four main characters in Zombieland identify themselves by the names of their destinations (Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, Little Rock) so as not to form "personal attachments".
• All the characters at the motel in the movie Identity have names like this, based on US States (Ed Dakota, Officer Rhodes, Paris Nevada, etc.) Though it isn't revealed at first until one character is flipping through everyone's IDs with a map on the wall nearby. Seems like just a coincidence until he also notices they also ALL have the same birthday. Turns out they are all separate personalities of a serial killer with a traumatic past tied to a motel

Literature

• The mystery of The Westing Game is unraveled when the Theme Naming is worked out: Windy Windkloppel, Samuel Westing, Barney Northrup, Sandy Mc Southers and Julian Eastman are all the same person.
• Tom Holt's Barking. The werewolf law firm is named Ferris and Loop (after Fenris and Lupine) while the vampire firm is named Crosswoods (cross: trans. Woods: sylvania).
• In the Savannah Reid mysteries, Savannah and her siblings are all named after Georgia towns: Savannah, Alma, Waycross, Jesup, Atlanta, Cordele, Vidalia, Macon, and Marietta.

Live Action TV

• In Corner Gas, a comedy set and filmed in small-town Saskatchewan, Canada, the last names of all the recurring characters are towns in Saskatchewan.
• Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show are named after hotels in New York City. One episode introduces Waldorf's wife Astoria.
• All of the Wombles in The Wombles are named after locations in Great Uncle Bulgaria's atlas: thus we have Orinoco, Tomsk, and Wellington, to name but three. For the revival Bulgaria's maps must have shrunk in the wash from an atlas to an A-Z as the new wombles are named almost exclusively after London Burroughs.
• Survivor
• Kamen Rider Double is made up of two individuals merging together: Shotaro Hidari controls the left, physical side, while the right, elemental side is controlled by his partner...Phillip. (Whose real name is Raito Sonozaki.)

Music

• All of the tracks of E.S. Posthumus' Unearthed are named after ancient cities/locations of varying significance.
  • Menouthis, a sacred city in Ancient Egypt, was submerged in the 8th century AD due to earthquakes or flooding.

Professional Wrestling

• WWE Superstar Rey Mysterio's trademark moves are called "West Coast Pop", obviously named from West Coast of the United States, and "619", which is the area code of San Diego, California (Also, part of the west coast by the way), his hometown.

Real Life

• The naming system of the US Navy used to name cruisers after cities, and battleships after states. Now the same seems to apply, respectively, to attack and ballistic missile submarines. Of course, the new Virginia class attack boats go back to being named after states, so who really knows.
  • This was done because the SSBN's were designated "Capital" class ships, like the old battleships were and Carriers (which get named after Presidents or similar persona) are. Now it seems someone decided the Virginia class would function as capital ships in the absence of new SSBN construction.
• Similar to the above, battleships and battlecruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy were typically given the names of locations (mostly mountains; Ise was named after a city, while Yamato and Fusou were old names for Japan). Akagi and Kaga kept their mountain-based names after being converted to carriers.
• The daughters of Spanish radio personality El Cucuy are Francia, Italia, and Irlanda, all Spanish names of countries in Europe.
• Joe Montana and his family.
• The 1998 Name of the Year belonged to one L.A. St. Louis. Curiously, finishing in second the same year was Paris London.

Video Games

• The first installment of the Disgaea named quite a few of its primary characters after volcanos, including Etna, Vulcanus (From Vulcano, Italy), Maderas (La Madera), Krichevskoy (Kliuchevskoi), and Lamington. Laharl is named after a type of pyroclastic mudslide that occurs after eruptions.
• In Freelancer, set in outer space within the Sirius sector, most of the planets, stations and areas have Terran names, what Nation the house is descended from. Liberty, for example, has Planet Houston, Baltimore Shipyard and the New York system, Bretonia has Planet Manchester, Glasgow Outpost and the Southampton Shipyard, Kusari has the Kansai Research Facility and the Shinjuku Station, while Rheinland has the Dresden system, Planet Stuttgart, and the Battleship Westfalen. All of the "houses" have their capital planet named after their original capital city, adding "New" to the name (New London, New Tokyo, New Berlin), with the exception of Liberty's capital planet (New York). The Border Worlds are usually called <Greek letter>-<Number>, the Zoner bases are usually called Freeport <Number>, the non-Zoner bases in the Border Worlds are named after islands like Helgoland, Curaçao, Falkland and Hawaii, and the Outcast and Corsair places have Hispanic names such as Toledo, Cádiz or Moctezuma.
• According to her spellcards, Alice Margatroid of Touhou Project names all of her dolls after mountains, cities and countries. Her most well-known type of doll are the Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls, to the point that fandom likes to portray her has having a single, unique doll named Shanghai.
• Kingdom Hearts has main heroes Sora (sky), Riku (shore), and Kairi (ocean village); their Generation Xerox predecessors Ventus (wind), Terra (earth), and Aqua (water); and Kairi's two offshoots, Naminé (wave) and Xion (tide).
• Final Fantasy VIII has Laguna, who is either named from either a province from the Philippines or a place in California, both known for their beautiful beaches.
• In the X-Universe, Terran capital ships are named for Japanese cities. We have the Yokohama frigate, the Tokyo carrier, the Osaka destroyer, and—in X3: Albion Prelude—the Kyoto battleship.

Web Comics

• The members of the Jones family in the "Cliffhangers" theme in Irregular Webcomic are all named after USA states (a parody of Indiana Jones), including Montana Jones, his father North Dakota Jones, and his grandfather Minnesota Jones.

Web Original

• Red vs. Blue has a bevy of Freelancer agents named after U.S. States.

Western Animation

• In a mixture of Theme Naming and Meaningful Name, Gargoyles had the titular characters choose names from their surroundings once they awoke in modern times. They chose their names from landmarks and districts in Manhattan: Hudson, Brooklyn, Lexington, Broadway and Bronx. Normally they do not have names, except with characters like Goliath.
  • And the Clone Clan are named after similar places in Los Angeles. Broadway's clone, for instance, is Hollywood.
  • Three of the named members of the Ishimura Clan (Kai, Yama and Sora) are named after places found in nature. (Sea, Mountain and Sky, respectively.) It can be assumed the rest of the clan follows a similar convention.
• José Carioca: His last name is a demonym for people from the state of Rio de Janeiro, which he is (so he's literally "Joe from Rio"). Brazilian writer Renato Canini decided to go with this when naming José cousins whose first names are all José, and their last names (mostly) describe where they are from.
• In Fillmore!, a middle-school parody of '70s cop shows, the main characters are all named after streets in San Francisco—and The Streets Of San Francisco was a classic '70s cop show.