There's a reason what we do is (often) termed a "setting". It's because a novel (ha: etymology: novel=new thing :-) ) has to have some elements that *aren't* new , so the reader can relate to the fantasy/ unique/ new elements. A jewel in a ring will often have very plain prongs holding it. It's always seemed nuts to me for a complicated painting to have a gold, decorated, complex, heavy frame. I understand the impulse - "this is an important, rare, beautiful thing, therefore I have to provide it with a fancy, beautiful, place to rest." The Japanese with their torii shrines make sense - enough of a frame to point out a beautiful view, without needing scads of attention drawn to itself.

So the elements of *particularly* a fantasy map become a shorthand to convey an impression, to create a mood, without having to tiresomely build a detailed backstory. Same as the 'standard' tropes of a fantasy story/movie/play -- shorthand. I'll steal from an earthly language in naming places specifically to invoke a central European or oriental or arctic or south seas island mood. True, I'll sometimes then skewer that mood with intentionally jarring countermelodies - the Tong gangster behavior in African garb and manners. The bronze armor in outer space. The steampunk mechanics in dinosaur society. But on purpose, and in moderation :-).

I am all for intentional inaccuracy in fantasy maps to restrict the in-story reader to what info he likely "should" have, as well as to simulate the overdetailing of unknown spaces - from 'here be dragons' to arbitrarily wiggly rivers to Atlantis and Mu just over the horizon. And I will cheerfully hide my River Police badge if someone is obviously mimicking things like the Blaeu China map :-).

My favorite (anti-favorite?) map cliche extends to the world being depicted -- when a certain society is sketched without enough infrastructure to sustain it. The alien planets in TV shows with a single village housing human-ish folks, having wrought iron implements with no mines or smelters, board-built houses with no sawmills, fancy textiles with no flax ,cotton, or silkworms growing.

The 'semi European' kingdom with a couple of scattered cities, a handful of villages, and none of those same mines, mills, farming, or craft-trading. Granted, hamlets and villages can fall off a regional map for simplification - still, an author or cartographer obviously sometimes INTENDS there be zero habitation between point a and b, where a 'proper' logical feudal-heritage European-ish society would have scads of peasants, serfs, freeholders, and general commerce going on.

Cities with no hinterlands, no umbra, no suburbs.

But if the story's good or the map is pretty, I'll suspend disbelief and forgive :-)