Wow, lots of good suggestions here. I'll add my own for the archives and future searches. Figuring the lay of land is probably the most difficult aspect of mapping, e.g shoreline, bays, major waterways. Once thats done, Mountains become easier followed by lakes and streams(Don't forget the prospect of synthetic lakes where inhabitants have dammed the rivers...these can be added later) Then of course city placements and then roads. Forests can be grown practically anywhere.

For naming things, as others stated already, don't crowd your map. Name the major regional areas, major watersources or waterways, forests, mountains ranges and laregr cities. Worry about the other stuff when you create blown up maps of specific areas(which usually accompany ideas of background that you may have)

To find names...get on to google earth, zoom down to the point of seeing the names of streets, rivers, counties, etc. and then pick and choose the ones that speak to you about a certain area of your map. You could actually get some inspiration from looking at the view in google.

Cheers.