Proust's obsession with place names

Not everyone will "get" the weirdness of the first few pages of the Place-Names: The Name section of Proust's "Swann's Way," in which the narrator (Marcel - though he's excruciatingly careful never to name the narrator, at least till much later in the series) reflects on how the name of a place can color and contain its entire character for us, how we can form an complete and complex impression of a place (and perhaps a person) by assimilating the name alone. I suspect some people read this and think he's nuts, and others will understand it immediately - I being among the latter; daughter J. will certainly know this phenomenon. Not totally clear where Proust meant to go with this extended observation - quite a break from the much more conventional novella-like middle section, Swann in Love, and, after further Proustian fixation on railroad schedules (the names of the towns on the line; the 1:22 departure time as a highlight of the day - of every day, as he ponders the trains leaving for the coastal resorts), we learn about Marcel's second encounter with the love and obsession of his life, Gilberte (Swann's daughter - is it ever made clear who Swann's wife might be? The woman that nobody else will see socially? Can't be Odette - but is she some other "courtesan"?) - at this point, back in Paris, wintry scenes at which Marcel meets Gilberte in the Champs-Elysee (then, obviously, much more of a park, perhaps something like Comm Ave in Boston?) when he they are still quite young, perhaps 10?, playing some version of hide-and-seek, but of course Marcel with the feelings and perceptions of an adult - and some beautiful passages about the nature of love and obsession.