What am I actually naming?

[Sarithus]

Hello Guild. I still seem to have problems with place names. Not the names themselves, but what it is that I'm actually naming.

My maps are in a Tolkien style and because the map of Middle Earth has varying sizes of place names I still feel the need to think about my place names in terms of scale and size.

I name my maps like this:
Continent > Countries > Regions > Mountains & Rivers & Lakes etc.

I understand naming the continent and countries as that's pretty simple. I also understand naming Mountains and Rivers, but it's the smaller names which trip me up.

To me, GONDOR, ERIADOR, ARNOR AND MORDOR are countries on the continent of Middle Earth. Rhovanion in the East being one massive country.

So on my Ulthui map Tulgreyson, Thyandul. New Saranai and other names of the same size are countries.

However, things get somewhat confused when I have established the countries. I don't know how many regions to include. (As a side note it seems odd that there are such small things as bridges included in the map of Middle Earth, but that could just be story based)

Take the country of Gondor. Inside of Gondor is Ithilien which is apparently just a 'region'. The word region doesn't really help me understand what it is.

But I've done the same thing on Ulthui. In Thyandul I have regions (smaller names) called Althari, Adrinados and Harthurin but if I'm being honest I just put those there so I can fill up the map. I don't actually know what they are except the vague term of regions in a country.

So how do you decide what it is your naming?

Thanks.