History Main / DescriptiveVille

* The Town in ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' is named Hill Valley.

* Pretty much every town or city in ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}''.

* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' has North City, South City, and so on. Eventually one of them gets wiped out by Cell and is rebuilt as Satan City (named after professional wrestler-turned-world's strongest man Mr. Satan/Hercule).

* WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles live in Metroville (a ShoutOut to ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' -- the name's a portmanteau of Metropolis and Series/{{Smallville}}). Judging by the name of the bank, the opening scene takes place in Municiberg.

* Night City is the default setting for Creator/RTalsorianGames' ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} 2020'' game.

[[quoteright:350:[[WesternAnimation/TheFairyOddParents https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hersdale.png]]]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/humansville.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350: Twinned with [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Ponyville.]]]]

* Most city-states and microstates fall under this (The capital of The Vatican being Vatican City, the capital of San Marino being San Marino, the capital of Andorra being Andorra la Vella ("Old Andorra"), and so forth.) Some aversions of this are the capital of Liechtenstein being Vaduz and of Brunei being Bandar Seri Begawan. This isn't limited to city-states and micro-states though, some examples of non-city-states and non-microstates with these kind of capitals being Kuwait's Kuwait City, and Pakistan's Islamabad. (Essentially "Muslim City")

** Something similar happened to any town or village with "upon-Thames" in its name, the River Thames having got its name partly from the old Celtic word for "river". Legend has it that Roman travelling merchants heard locals refer to the river by the word "thame" and failed to realise that it wasn't the local name for ''that specific river'' until quite a while later[[note]]and yes, this was almost certainly the inspiration for a joke in ''Literature/TheLightFantastic''[[/note]]. After the island became a part of the Roman Empire they formally renamed it the River Isis, at least partly out of sheer embarrassment, and a few centuries of linguistic drift later we got "Thames".

** Non-city examples include Australia's westernmost state, called Western Australia, and the southern state South Australia. Of Australia's two territories, the one to the north is called... well, the Northern Territory and the other, founded to TakeAThirdOption in arguments over where the Capital should go is called the Australian Capital Territory. Down Under, we're not known for our creativity with names.

* In Japan and probably China. Kyoto: capital city. Tokyo: Eastern capital. Beijing: the characters mean "North Capital" (as the opposite to Nanjing, "Southern capital"). May be because Chinese characters force you to have meaningful names, while phonetic alphabets allow a place name's meaning to get lost once the pronunciation changes. Similarly, modern-day Hanoi used to be called "Đông Kinh" (Eastern Capital) to distinguish it from "Tây Kinh" (Western Capital), which is in modern-day Thanh Hóa province.
** Hà Nội itself is a case of this as Vietnam is also a Sinosphere country. "Hà Nội" literally means "within the river", because the city used to be ringed by the Red River until it absorbed some other provinces. There are/were also Hà Tây, Hà Nam, Hà Đông, and Hà Bắc - respectively "west, south, east, and north of the river".

* In Japan and probably China. Kyoto: capital city. Tokyo: Eastern capital. Beijing: the characters mean "North Capital" (as the opposite to Nanjing, "Southern capital"). May be because Chinese characters force you to have meaningful names, while phonetic alphabets allow a place name's meaning to get lost once the pronunciation changes.

** Also, [[UpToEleven Australia itself]] as "australis" means "southern" in Latin.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this with the City of Townsville and the Town of Citysville. Also the Town of Farmsville.

** "State" Cities are also common in America: there's Indianapolis, capital of Indiana; Oklahoma City, capital of Okalhoma, and numerous others. This can lead to some strangeness, however: one of the two municipalities named Kansas City is [[NonindicativeName in mostly in Missouri]][[note]]the city straddles the state's border with Kansas and both the city and the state are named after the Kansas River.[[/note]] and the other Kansas City is a small town in Oregon, apparently named by settlers proud to be from Kansas.

* Most city-states and microstates fall under this (The capital of The Vatican being Vatican City, the capital of San Marino being San Marino, the capital of Andorra being Andorra la Vella ("Old Andorra"), and so forth.) Some aversions of this are the capital of Liechtenstein being Vaduz and of Brunei being Bandar seri Begawan. This isn't limited to city-states and micro-states though, some examples of non-city-states and non-microstates with these kind of capitals being Kuwait's Kuwait City, and Pakistan's Islamabad. (Essentially "Muslim City")

* WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles live in Metroville (a ShoutOut to ''{{Superman}}'' -- the name's a portmanteau of Metropolis and Series/{{Smallville}}). Judging by the name of the bank, the opening scene takes place in Municiberg.

* ''VideoGame/{{Tamagotchi}}'': Several towns and villages on Tamagotchi Planet are named for what family of Tamagotchis one can find there. For example, Mame City is populated by the Mame family and Patchi Forest is populated by the Patchi family.

* Due to the GiantCorpseWorld setting of ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHOuse'', most locations on the Boiling Isles are either named after the body parts that they're built on or nearby. For example, the two cities that we see in series are Bonesborough (which is nestled in a series of rib-like bones) and Latissa (which is in the armpit, just above the ''latissimus dorsi'').

* How about TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'s [[RodentsofUnusualSize Skavenblight]]? [[ArbitrarySkepticism Not that the Skaven actually exist, of course...]]

* Rivet City in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}''

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls''

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}'' has, among other things, the Human Village, the only location on the map that is truly safe for human residents.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''ComicBook/AstroCity'' is both the ComicBook series and its main setting. Justified in that the city was originally Romeyn Falls, but was later renamed to honor the superhero Astro-Naut when he died saving it.

* Neighborville in the ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies'' series, first introduced in the ComicBookAdapation, then used ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombiesBattleForNeighborville'' and ''3''.

** "State" Cities are also common in America: there's Indianapolis, capital of Indiana; Oklahoma City, capital of Okalhoma, and numerous others. This can lead to some strangeness, however: one of the two municipalities named Kansas City is [[NonindicativeName in mostly in Missouri]][[note]]the city straddles the state's border with Kansas[[/note]] and the other Kansas City is a small town in Oregon, apparently named by settlers proud to be from Kansas.