Is this で with 思い当たる the particle or te-form

Question

From the anime "Heavenly Delusion", and a main character asks someone about their knowledge of a place called "Heaven" (天国):

あっ あと 天国って場所で 何か思い当たることないですか？

Oh, before I forget, have you ever heard of a place called "Heaven"? (show's translation)

At first, I assumed this was the particle で that marks a condition/scope of an action. But the problem is that a.) The only way I can understand it as the particle is with quotations, as something like "With the place called "Heaven", is there nothing that comes to mind?". But this doesn't make much sense to me, because it seems more common to use either に or the te-form with 思い当たる like so:

・その名前を聞いて何か思い当たることはありませんか.　

When you hear the name [hearing that name], does it remind you of anything?

b.) If the te-form is a common usage, is it not possible to understand the で as te-form of だ? As in, "It being a place called "Heaven", is there not anything that comes to mind?". If it helps, this is the first time in the conversation mentioning Heaven.

Answer 1

I'm not entirely sure if you're asking whether で as the て-form of だ is possible in the general case or in this case. In the general case, it's certainly possible, but I don't think that's what's happening here.

For the specific case, you have kind of answered your own question here by defining で as a particle that marks a condition/scope of an action, because marking scope is exactly what's happening here. You gave this as a possible translation:

With the place called "Heaven", is there nothing that comes to mind?

...and I grant this is awkward English, but で is more flexible than English "with", and in this case it is entirely a matter of scope. If you'll forgive a really direct translation, I would put this as something like

In the scope of places called "Heaven", does anything come to mind?

Which is how we get to

have you ever heard of a place called "Heaven"

Although this could also be asking if they knew anything about said place. I think that if you wanted this to be the て-form of だ, it would need to be 何か思い当たる場所 instead of 何か思い当たること, because 場所 and こと referring to the same thing would be pretty strange.