28 November 2023 , 11:24
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Anyone not familiar with American geography might be astonished to know there are 650 American cities that share the same name as those found in England and Europe. For example. Birmingham, as a place name, pops up all over the US, from Connecticut to Iowa. There are three cities named London in America: one in Ohio, another in Arkansas, and another in Kentucky.
And it appears that many people are completely unaware of the two countries' connection and that Britain colonised the States, and passed on many of the names that were already in use. Many places in America were named after locations in England because of the English settlers and explorers of the Thirteen Colonies.
According to historians, British settlers in the US wanted to create a sense of familiarity and home in the new land they were inhabiting. For example, New York City was named after the Duke of York, and Boston was named after Boston, Lincolnshire in England.
And while Washington, D.C., the federal capital of the U.S., is named after the first U.S. President George Washington, his surname is actually due to his family holding land in Washington, Tyne and Wear.
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Asking for more information about why so many US cities are named after UK locations on social media, most commenters found the question quite straightforward. One person wrote: "... Now think about it just for a minute. Which country conquered and settled the country that became the United States, and later lost it to when it became independent in 1776? Britain. And what were British people going to name new cities in a new country?"
A Brit agreed, “Easy, you Yanks should know this. Founding fathers came from, wait for it. The UK.” Another commenter chimed in with how basic the settlers' name choices had been, writing: “The immigrants lacked the imagination to come up with new names and named their new towns after their old homes just like the Spanish, French and other nations did.”
One American poked fun at their own historical ignorance, adding: “I’m amazed that this question comes up with monotonous regularity. Are Americans truly that dumb? And even more dastardly, we copied them hundreds of years before the US was even its own country. We're such rapscallions. The answer of course is that people arriving in a strange place felt an attachment to their earlier home and thus named their new home after their old one.”
Another English person amusingly pointed out their hometown was passed over when they were naming places in the US. They wrote: “Not all of them. I live in a town called 'Indian Queens', I can see this could be a problem in the USA.”
Another commenter pointed out it wasn’t just UK names that had been pilfered for the new world, “It is not just the UK. I grew up in Russellville, Arkansas, USA. In addition to London, we have Paris, Augsburg, and Scotland in the immediate vicinity, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Parthenon farther away in the state. Pennsylvania is overrun with German place names."
Another said it was due to homesickness, “Many of the first inhabitants were lonely for their former homeland. So New York City was originally New Amsterdam since they were Dutch settlers. A Swiss colony in Wisconsin is called New Glarus. The pattern is observable all over the East and Midwest. But the most observable is Lancaster PA and its surrounding suburbs.”
One person pointed out that no Welsh city names were given a double life in North America, “I feel sorry for Wales! There's a New England, a new Scotland, Nova Scotia, but not a lot of Welsh names made it across the Atlantic.”