The place came first, the name second. These surnames remember where they came from.
A surname from a place appears at one specific moment: when the person left that place. While everyone in the village is from the same village, naming anyone after it is pointless.
So a place surname is almost always the trace of a move. It says not where I am from but where I came from to the place that named me this.
The place in such a name is older than the name: first there was a hill, a wood, a ford or a border, and only then a line that came from it.
27 surnames taken apart.