Manhattan, for all its charms, can sometimes fail the imagination.

From the “financial district” to “Midtown” to the “Upper West Side,” the names of neighborhoods can seem just-the-facts dull, seeming to prefer literal and safe over style and mystery.

It wasn’t always this way. Checkering the borough once were names far more novel, like Mackarelville (on the Lower East Side), San Juan Hill (on the Upper West Side) and Jones Wood (on the Upper East Side), names which frequently got wiped off maps with the help of developers.

“The real estate industry has played a huge role naming neighborhoods,” said Robert Snyder, the official Manhattan Borough Historian, though he added that “most New Yorkers live within three blocks and everything beyond that is an abstraction.”

In the four other boroughs, however, where real estate pressure has not been so intense, evocative place names have hung on, from Ozone Park and Rego Park in Queens to Graniteville on Staten Island.