North Indian place-names carry their history in their suffixes. Centuries of Persian-language administration left a stock of paired markers — Khurd ('small') and Kalan ('great'), but also Buzurg ('elder') and forms like Chhoti/Badi — that split a settlement into two while keeping the shared root name. Meeting a Khurd–Kalan pair almost always means two neighbouring villages with one origin.
Other elements are regional. In Awadh, Para and Purva mark a hamlet or quarter of a larger village; across the Gangetic plain, endings like -pur, -purwa, -nagar and -abad record founders, deities or rulers. Learning this grammar pays off in research: it lets you guess a locality's type and region, and it explains why a single search term can return places hundreds of kilometres apart.