You might think Morgan Hill, California was named because of a prominent feature of the landscape. Nope, named after a guy named Morgan Hill.
(And the hill you see in Morgan Hill, CA is actually named El Toro — the Spanish word for "lawnmower". Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here for one more night.)
One might think that Menlo Park, California was founded after the one made famous by Edison in New Jersey, but amazingly it's the other way around.
Via Wikipedia:
In 1876, Thomas Edison set up his home and research laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, at the time an unsuccessful real estate development named after the town of Menlo Park, California.
Edison also had a winter home in Orlando, Florida. And Orlando was NOT founded by George Boole, despite containing both substrings "or" and "and" (but not "not").
This site [1] claims to be a Spanish dictionary and it doesn't agree, it claims the word is "la cortadora de césped".
I guess it's possible that the word has become a generic trademark [2] like Kleenex, since of course (?) Toro [3] is a brand of lawnmowers and other equipment.
Edit: switching Toro's site to Spanish [4] shows that they at least use the term consistent with [1], which seems to add credibility. :)
Spanish and English usually merge in fun, unpredictable ways. In certain parts of Andalusia people refer to electrical drills as "el guarrito" (the little pig). Turns out it's because there was a drill brand called "Warrington", hence the mix.
My mother's family has lived in Morgan Hill for over a century, and I've been there often. It always bothered me when I was a little boy that El Toro was not in fact called "Morgan Hill", and that none of the local hills were Morgan Hill.
(And the hill you see in Morgan Hill, CA is actually named El Toro — the Spanish word for "lawnmower". Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here for one more night.)