If you never travelled more than 20 miles from your home in your life, and there’s only a single desert in that region, there’s no point in giving it a name. Everyone will just call it “the desert”. The need to give unique names to (large) geographic features only arrise with, and for, explorers. The people they were talking too probably didn’t even consider the idea of a large geographic feature like the desert or the big lake having or needing a proper name.
Ah, the universality of man('s miscommunications)
If you never travelled more than 20 miles from your home in your life, and there’s only a single desert in that region, there’s no point in giving it a name. Everyone will just call it “the desert”. The need to give unique names to (large) geographic features only arrise with, and for, explorers. The people they were talking too probably didn’t even consider the idea of a large geographic feature like the desert or the big lake having or needing a proper name.