Naming things after people


European languages seem to name things after people (or people-like things) on
a very regular basis. We have everything from 'Mount Everest' and 'Washington,
DC' to 'Robert A Welch Hall'. Places named after people are absolutely
everywhere.

Japan, on the other hand, seems to do this much less frequently. I've seen
some buildings named after people, but rather fewer proportionally than I
expect - I think my local university campus here in the US has a person's name
on more than 90% of the buildings, but looking at maps of Japanese campuses, I
see one or two here or there. I've never seen a city or a mountain or any
other sort of actual toponym that I found out or could tell was named after an
actual person.

Am I right in drawing this conclusion - that naming things after people is
much rarer in Japan, and naming places after people basically never happens?

Is there some other naming strategy that 'makes up the difference', as it
were? E.g. Spanish and French have a lot of saint-based or other religion-
based placenames (or did historically) when English rarely does (or did) that
- is there something that Japanese does (or did) instead?

(To be fair, toponyms in Japan are on average a lot older than toponyms in
North America, where a lot of these personal toponyms are, so that might
affect things significantly.)




Conglomerating and inferring from the comments, here's my best attempt at a
unified answer.

Naming things, especially places, after people is quite rare in Japan. Perhaps
the largest exception is the fact that companies are typically named after
their founders (e.g. Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Yamada). Some places as well are
named after people who once owned large mansions there (thank you @Chocolate).

Things named _commemoratively_ after people, to memorialise or honour them,
are much rarer. There seem to be some university buildings named this way,
though proportionally far fewer than on American campuses. The only placename
I've seen (thank you @kimiTanaka) is Nogizaka, which was renamed in 1912 to
commemorate general and national hero Nogi Maresuke.

In short, naming things after people seems to be rather rare in Japan compared
at least to America, and possibly also to other European countries.

