This paper considers the influence of toponymy, or place-naming on the way people map, and picture the world. I will introduce the term nominal place to describe how place-naming seeks to create a sense of place in a settler-colonial context, using the small town of Cobourg, Ontario as an example. And I will suggest that nominal place works to create a map of aspirational place that is projected and constructed onto existing place. I will describe how attempts to change the name of Cobourg’s Langevin Pier revealed what Nichole Grant and Timothy Stanley refer to as “the wallpaper of dominance”. I will place this local issue within the context of critical toponymy in Canada and around the world. And I will outline how I have formulated my current PhD research in Canadian Studies at Trent University as a response to TRC Call to Action #79 on commemoration. Drawing on notions of place and story encountered during my MA in English (Public Texts), and my doctoral research to date, I will suggest a preliminary reading of the place names of Cobourg as a text. Giving examples such as the ratio of English, to Indigenous; or male, to female eponyms, I will note how the resulting nominal place may operate to enhance some stories; and to erase, or obscure others. Inspired by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s notion of coming to know, and James Raffan’s analysis of land-based learning, I will consider the confluence of toponymic, narrative, experiential and numinous ways of knowing Cobourg. I will conclude by considering nominal place as a potentially powerful tool to enhance right relations, with First Peoples; with urban citizens; and with creatures, lands, and waters, in Cobourg and beyond.