I came across this discussion a bit late but wanted to share some of my observations about Ukrainian place names.
When it comes to river names, in Ukraine, it’s indeed traditional to omit the word “river” in many cases. However, with most other types of names, this approach doesn’t seem to work as well.
In Ukrainian, it’s quite easy to form adjectives from city names, so there are plenty of derived toponyms based on a single primary one. For example, the city of Kyiv serves as a primary name. From it, we have Kyivska Street (Kyiv Street), Kyivske Lake (Kyiv Lake), Kyivsky Park (Kyiv Park), and so on.
As a result, many Ukrainian place names follow the structure “adjective + common noun.”
Here are some real Ukrainian street names translated into English to illustrate my point:
- Beautiful Alley
- Polar Street
- Accessible Street
- Pleasant Alley
- Clear Alley
- Attractive Street
- Historical Street
- Christian Street
- Mysterious Dead End
- Cultural Alley
Even if we assume that a map object’s tag narrowly and accurately describes its type, names without descriptive words (common nouns) often feel incomplete. They seem like fragments or, to put it more bluntly, truncated versions of the original names.
These are just my thoughts based on my observations. I think similar patterns can be seen in other countries as well.