Both in France and Switzerland, a quite recent process of municipal merging has led to a huge production of new municipal names (770 from 2012 up to 2019 in France) and the (partial) loss of previous names (approximately 2500). This occurs in an increasing context of territorial marketing and participative approaches to involve citizens in the choice of names. In view of certain practices, official recommendations have been made. They demand to avoid a) spelling or typographical errors, b) multi-barrelled names c) advertising names. On the field, there are many debates which refer to the issues of territorial identity. In particular, the issues of the center-periphery relationship and local or regional or linguistic heritage memory are at stake. The outcome is very often a neutral toponymy that values certain generic elements of the environment and no longer refers to localities or dialects. The case of the proliferation of references to valleys : “Val de ...” or “Val ...”, can be seen as the result of this process of neutralization through the use of generic topographical or hydrological references, and as a certain internationalization of the referent "valley" at the local level based on the Anglo-Saxon experience. References to historical regional ancient names (“x in ...” ) are also numerous, which make it possible to attribute regional qualities or resources to the new municipal entity, rather than to assert a local specificity.