A mountain name records two facts. Matterhorn is "meadow peak": what stands there, and the word for that kind of standing. Here are 110 mountain names with their parts on the table: 96 invented builds on real generic terms, and 14 real peaks with documented naming stories.
One descriptor plus one generic term, in every tradition. That is the whole population of this list. The first 96 rows are invented builds: our descriptors on real generics, labeled invented. The last 14 are attested mountains, labeled with their language and their story. Names bold, glosses plain, the tradition on every row:
Invented builds first, attested peaks last.
Mountain names with builds, meanings and traditions
Descriptor + generic (invented build, labeled); generic receipt: Hay Tor
Matterhorn
mat (meadow) + horn (peak)
the meadow peak, named for the pastures at its foot
Real mountain (attested); German, Zermatt
Denali
the Koyukon name
the high one; restored as the official name in 2015
Real mountain (attested); Koyukon, Alaska
Everest
the surveyor’s surname
named for George Everest, who never saw it; the mountain’s own names are older
Real mountain (attested); colonial naming, 1865
Chomolungma
the Tibetan name
Goddess Mother of the World, the peak’s own name; Sagarmatha, Forehead in the Sky, is the Nepali one
Real mountain (attested); Tibetan and Nepali
Mauna Kea
mauna (mountain) + kea (white)
the white mountain, for the snow that crowns it
Real mountain (attested); Hawaiian
Ben Nevis
beinn (mountain) + a contested second element
the mountain of Nevis; the second element is debated, venom and heaven both proposed
Real mountain (attested); Scottish Gaelic; second element contested
Snowdon
snaw (snow) + dun (hill); Welsh: Yr Wyddfa
snow hill in English; the barrow, a grave mound, in Welsh
Real mountain (attested); Old English and Welsh, two names
Scafell Pike
skali (shelter) + fjall (mountain) + pike (pointed peak)
the shelter mountain’s pointed peak, Norse naming in Cumbria
Real mountain (attested); Old Norse, Lake District
Kirkjufell
kirkja (church) + fjall (mountain)
the church mountain, for the steeple shape of the summit
Real mountain (attested); Icelandic
Table Mountain
table + mountain
the flat-topped mountain, said exactly as seen
Real mountain (attested); descriptive, Cape of Good Hope
Uluru
the Pitjantjatjara name
the rock’s own name; it is a name, not a word with a gloss
Real mountain (attested); Pitjantjatjara, Australia
Aoraki
the ancestor’s name
the ancestor Aoraki of Ngāi Tahu telling, often glossed cloud piercer
Real mountain (attested); Māori, Ngāi Tahu
Mont Blanc
mont (mountain) + blanc (white)
the white mountain, for its glaciers
Real mountain (attested); French, the Alps
Kilimanjaro
no agreed etymology
the great African peak; the name’s origin is genuinely debated
Real mountain (attested); East Africa; etymology contested
What do mountain names mean?
Exactly what the two halves say. Stormhorn is storm plus peak. Denali is the high one, in the language of the people who live under it. Twelve meaning receipts:
Mountain name meaning spotlight
Name
Built from
Meaning
Stormhorn
storm + horn
the horn of the storm, a sharp peak
Frostfell
frost + fell
the fell of the frost, a mountain, high wild ground
Ravensgurr
raven + sgurr
the sgurr of the raven, a sharp, rocky peak
Winterben
winter + ben
the ben of the winter, a mountain, a height
Goldtor
gold + tor
the tor of the gold light, a bare rocky peak
Thunderpike
thunder + pike
the pike of the thunder, a pointed peak
Matterhorn
mat (meadow) + horn (peak)
the meadow peak, named for the pastures at its foot
Denali
the Koyukon name
the high one; restored as the official name in 2015
Mauna Kea
mauna (mountain) + kea (white)
the white mountain, for the snow that crowns it
Kirkjufell
kirkja (church) + fjall (mountain)
the church mountain, for the steeple shape of the summit
Uluru
the Pitjantjatjara name
the rock’s own name; it is a name, not a word with a gloss
Mont Blanc
mont (mountain) + blanc (white)
the white mountain, for its glaciers
Every one of the 110 rows above carries the same receipt in its own columns.
How do mountain names work?
The generic names the landform; the descriptor tells it apart from its neighbors.Ben Nevis is the mountain of Nevis. Scafell Pike is the pointed peak of the shelter mountain. The grammar never changes, only the language does: Gaelic ben, Norse fell, Alpine horn, Irish slieve. Fantasy maps run the same machine, pointed at invented ranges.
This generic-plus-descriptor move is the same morphological habit that builds kingdom names and town names across the site. The name morphology basics guide breaks the habit into parts, and this page is its landform example set.
The three naming conventions
Real oronymy, the study of how places got named, sees three moves. The descriptive eye. The possessive name. The borrowed local word. Every attested row above uses one of them:
The three real mountain naming conventions
Convention
What it does
Real receipts
descriptive
names what the eye sees
Table Mountain, Matterhorn (meadow peak), Mont Blanc (white mountain)
possessive and eponymous
names the person who measured, owned or reached it
Mount Washington; Everest, the surveyor’s surname
transliterated
carries the local name into the colonial map, or back out of it
Denali, the high one, restored 2015; Chomolungma
The generic terms: ben, fell, horn and their class
Every language keeps a mountain word, and the map wears it. These ten are the suffix bank the invented rows draw on, each documented with a real receipt:
Real mountain generic terms with receipts
Generic
Means
Receipt
horn
a sharp peak
Matterhorn
fell
a mountain, high wild ground
Scafell
ben
a mountain, a height
Ben Nevis
carn
a stone-heap summit
the Carn hills of the Highlands
pike
a pointed peak
Scafell Pike
tor
a bare rocky peak
Hay Tor
knob
a rounded summit
Pilot Knob
slieve
a moorland mountain
Slieve Donard
sgurr
a sharp, rocky peak
Sgùrr Alasdair
feld
open high ground
Feldberg
Real mountains, decomposed
Fourteen attested peaks, parsed with the same grammar this list uses. Note what the conventions do: the descriptive rows say what the eye sees, the eponymous rows say who measured or owned, the transliterated rows carry the local name through. The contested rows say so:
The invented bank is the fantasy lane, and the picking rule is simple.Choose the generic for the climate you are writing: fell for weathered northern moors, horn for sharp alpine ridges, ben for an old Gaelic-flavored range, sgurr for severe rocky country, knob for rounded warm hills. Then choose the descriptor for the story: the storm, the raven, the frost, the gold light. Bolt them together, and the receipt is already written.
The pattern is honest on purpose: real generic, invented descriptor, the label on every row. When your reader parses it, they parse a real grammar.
Mountain name questions, answered
What is a mountain name?
Two facts in one name: what the peak looks like, and what people call that shape. The second fact is the generic: ben, fell, horn, pike, tor. The first is the descriptor: white, meadow, church, storm. Every tradition on earth builds mountain names this way, and the 110 rows above show both halves on every line.
Are these mountain names real?
Fourteen are real and say so; ninety-six are invented builds and say that too. The attested rows come with their language and their source, and the contested ones (Ben Nevis, Kilimanjaro) carry the debate. The invented rows are descriptor plus real generic, labeled invented in the tradition column, built for fantasy maps and stories.
What do ben and fell mean?
Ben is Scottish Gaelic beinn, a mountain, as in Ben Nevis. Fell is Old Norse fjall, high wild ground, left across northern England by Norse settlers, as in Scafell. They are generic terms, the mountain-word each language keeps, and the full class (ben, fell, horn, carn, pike, tor, knob, slieve, sgurr, feld) is tabled above.
How do I name a fantasy mountain?
Pick the generic for the climate, then the descriptor for the story. Fell reads weathered and northern. Horn reads alpine and sharp. Ben reads Gaelic and old. Sgurr reads rocky and severe. Then bolt on what the story needs: the storm, the raven, the frost. The fantasy name generator builds from the same place-word stock live.
Where the meanings come from.Generic-term glosses and attested decompositions follow published place-name scholarship (British and Irish toponymy, Alpine naming, Hawaiian, Koyukon, Tibetan, Pitjantjatjara and Ngāi Tahu sources). Indigenous names appear as receipts with their owning language; contested etymologies (Ben Nevis, Kilimanjaro) are flagged in-row; invented builds are labeled invented. Where every name's receipt comes from →