Radio personality Bill Barry was fascinated with the place names of his native Saskatchewan. So much so that he wrote a Dictionary of Saskatchewan Place Names, I'm sure you've probably read it already but an interesting item about this toponymy is how many of the towns were originally named by the powerful railway companies. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway began naming its sidings in alphabetical order starting in Manitoba and going through the alphabet three times. Here is part of a map from Barry's book, via the Prairie Fiddler. Click to see the entire map.
You can still see the pattern in today's place names. Here's a section via Apple Maps going from Venn to Zelma then continuing with Allan, Bradwell and Clavet.
Their are interruptions for pre-existing towns or other anomalies such as Nokomis but otherwise it follows pretty well. Here is a detail of the above section from an old RandMcNally map showing a place called Xena between Watrous and Young.
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