Is there any premise for Compounding Words in Spanish place names?

Question

I'm trying to make a Fakemon (fanmade Pokemon) region based on Mexico, and I want to name a number of the cities with Spanish-sounding names. I admit that I'm terrible at making names, so I use this name generator I found and then translate the names. Only a lot of the names are compounds, like "Bloodwind" and "Coppersheen", and when I translate them it comes out like "Viento de Sangre" or "Brillo de Cobre", which doesn't sound like a name, and I tried reorganizing it to be "Sangreviento" and "Cobrebrillo", but I don't know if that works. Does it, or should I try something else?

Answer 1

Yes, there is precedent for making placenames from compounds in Spanish and in Mexico:

Villalobos, Matamoros, Monterrey, Aguascalientes, Nezahualcóyotl, Valladolid, Tenochtitlán, Buenaventura, Santiago, Pueblonuevo, Xochimilco, Cabañaquinta, Veracruz, Villaviciosa…

That said, your suggested placenames don’t sound like realistic Mexican placenames for a few reasons:

• They don’t sound very realistic in English.
• Placenames in Mexico do often contain multiple words, like San Juan Teotihuacán or Tlajomulco de Zúñiga.
• Most one-word compounds in Spanish are either a noun and an adjective, or a verb and a noun, like Matamoros (kills Moors i.e. Moorkiller).
• Half the placenames in Mexico are from the indigenous languages of Mexico, not really from Spanish.
• Many placenames and person names from Spain, like Guadalajara, are from a non-Romance language like Basque, Celtic, Visigothic or Arabic, or from a language like Asturian or Leonese, not from Castilian Spanish.

Because truth is stranger than fiction, there are plenty of real Mexican placenames that are as gruesome or entertaining as Vientosangriento:

Matanzas, Dolores, Salsipuedes, Válgame Dios, La Chingada, Tamaulipas, Tlatlauquitepec, La Dinamita, Parangaricutiro, Basaseachic, Xbox…. And a few more that are not fit to print.

This does seem like something that a generative AI model like ChatGPT would be good at, especially if you can give it a few examples, both real and fictional, single or multiple words.