Ulaanbaatar is Mongolia’s biggest urban center. Here, traditional place naming and spatial orientation practices collide with contemporary top-down and bottom-up place naming processes. The talk will present an overview of Ulaanbaatar’s multilayered toponymic landscape. Using examples from historical and contemporary maps, administrative documents, and photos, the presentation will introduce the main groups of Ulaanbaatar place names along with several phenomena regulating interactions between these groups and shaping the local urban namescape. Examples of unobvious etymologies will be explained. Differences between the downtown and fringe area (ger district) place names will be discussed alongside address policies and their impact on everyday life in the city.