Why do we say "Mississippi river" instead of "River Mississippi"?

Question

I'd like to know why we say "Mississippi river" and "New York City" rather than "River Mississippi" and "City New York".
I'm assuming these are the names of the river and the city, respectively. Is there any grammar rule that states it has to be this way?
And why do we say "My friend Joe" and not "My Joe friend", if the names come first?

Answer 1

There is no consistent naming convention. In the case of a proper name, the proper name is held as one complete name. Like that of a person. Although, you may shorten it. You can not change its order haphazardly. In other words, the Mississippi River is always the Mississippi River. It may be called the Mississippi or the river Mississippi. River is not capitalized when using it as an adjective. New York City is the city’s proper name. It may be called New York. But, it is never called City New York. If you were to use city as an adjective, it would not be capitalized. If city were to be used as a noun instead of a name, it would not be capitalized, the city of New York. The city of Salt Lake is another example of shortening the proper name Salt Lake City.

On the other hand, friend is not a proper part of Joe’s name. Friend is used as an adjective to describe Joe.

Answer 2

As the other answers have said, there isn't a rule about naming things. The "great lakes" between the US and Canada are named Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, etc. but a large lake between Kentucky and Tennessee in the US is named Kentucky Lake.

There are some general rules about attributives that might help though.

In general, attributive adjectives and nouns precede the "nominal" (a word or group of words acting as a noun) they modify in English.

^OKthe large cow

not

^∗the cow large

So, in English we would be more likely to name something "The Rodolfo Foundation" and not "The Foundation Rodolfo". Rodolfo is modifying "foundation", so we almost always put it first unless we are choosing to do something unusual for poetic or literary reasons.

Attributives that precede the nominal are "prepostive". In English, we use "postpositive" adjectives, or adjectives that come after the nominal they modify, for indefinite pronouns. For example, we write:

^OKSomeone tall should get the boxes from the top shelf.

not

^∗Tall someone should get the boxes from the top shelf.

Postpositive attributives are also used in terms from other languages, like "body politic" or "attorney general". These are usually special legal or financial terms, or official positions, so it's easier to think of them as set phrases.

A predicative adjective comes after the nominal and includes a linking verb. For example,

The cow is large.

Some adjectives can only be used attributively or predicatively. For example, "asleep" is strictly predicative:

^OKThe dog was asleep on the couch.

but not

^∗The asleep dog was on the couch.

The adjective "elder", for example, is strictly attributive:

^OKThe elder child has red hair.

but not

^∗The red haired child is elder.

There isn't a rule that I know of to know precisely which adjectives can only be predicative or attributive; you may just have to memorize them.

Answer 3

It is really just a naming convention. In England, for example, you have the River Thames, so there’s no rule about this.

Saying “my Joe friend” wouldn’t really make much sense, as the name of the entity is just Joe, and “friend” denotes his relationship to you. “Joe” isn’t really an adjective that describes your friend in any sense, whereas there is a sense in which we could think of “New York” as functioning as an adjective that describes the city in “New York City”.

Answer 4

I assume that the Americans say 'New York City' to distinguish it from New York State.

There is no grammar rule involved. In the UK we say 'River Trent', 'River Clyde' etc.

'My friend' is just something you add to explain who Joe is, not part of his name. You could just as easily say 'My friend Joe.'