There is an outstanding article, The Trouble With The View From Above, about the names we give places – and the way this process reflects the governance of society – by James C Scott in the current Cato Unbound. (Thanks to Tim Harford for alerting me to it via Twitter, where he's @timharford and I'm @diane1859). I can't recommend it highly enough.
If you read it and appreciate it, but haven't yet read Scott's book, Seeing Like A State, you have a treat in store. It's hard to imagine a more thorough and damning critique of social engineering.
The book, first published in 1998 – in other words, less than a decade after the collapse of the social engineering scheme that was state communism – explores why grandiose plans go awry. High modernism was a deadly dead end, he concludes. Liberal democracy and the common law have flaws but are rarely murderous. Scott's message is that we nevertheless undervalue the practice of civic engagement and participation in every day institutions that will safeguard the liberal democratic social order.
His conclusion: “use it or lose it.” A decently liberal version of “Aux armes, citoyens!”