Consequently people from New England are the only ones who know how half the current English place names are pronounced.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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Meanwhile in the UK they have Bath and Bedford
Not to mention my whole country is named after a place there. New Zealand
"Truth and Consequences, NM"
"Dinosaur, CO"
"City of Industry, CA"
"Why Not?, NC"
Springfield, yes
The multitude of inland cities nowhere near an ocean named Canton
I don't get it.
Lots of inland American cities are named after the famous port city of China, Canton, which is formally known as Guangzhou.
I don't know why it was such a popular pick back in the day, but I'm guessing it has to do with this:
The port of Guangzhou serves as a transportation hub. Guangzhou is also one of China's three largest cities.[10] For a long time, it was the only Chinese port accessible to the Europeans
Canton and Cantonese is actually the english name derived from the Portuguese transliteration of the region when they first started ocean trading with China.
There's a lot of places in America that are named after native American tribes. I guess it's the least our predecessors could do considering how badly they fucked over and slaughtered the natives.
Meanwhile, Alexander the Great: You'll be me lol
"Americans" as in white Europeans?
Other than the earliest settlements, most cities in the US were named by people born in North America.
It would be amazing if they had arrived to the Americas and ask some natives about how they call a place and they said "this? This is New Amsterdam. We don't know what's Amsterdam but this is a newer version of it"
My ancestors had great names for places. Then the white invaders killed most of us and named our land after their home.
I think this meme would be better suggested to say white European immigrants to America.
Exactly - they weren't "Americans" yet.
Let's name our town "New [someplace we miss back home]."
Well, the Capitol of Minnesota could have been called Pigs Eye after a French Canadian fur trapper if it wasn't for a Catholic priest changing it to St Paul.
First read this as “naming new borns” and I was thinking of names like Paris or London, and all of the comments kind of made sense but were still slightly off. It was a fun, confusing time for me, until I scrolled up and re-read OP. Thanks for listening to my story.
More evidence that Egypt is European.
In the west coast we typically just used the name of the native tribe we killed in order to take the land.
Or the Spanish name from when the Spanish took the land a couple hundred years before.
In Oklahoma we just use the name of whatever tribe was forcibly relocated there. Although I know of one town that was named after a misspelling of an indian chief's name. The Apollo 14 CSM pilot lived there.
I wouldn't know anything about that here in siʔaɬ.
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But you forgot, we also have to mispronounce it then get mad if you don't mispronounce it the right way.
-someone that was born in New berlin, not "new berLIN", But "new BURlin".
How about naming the town after a city in Austria, but still the Roman way? Not just once, not just twice, but
(EDIT: I'm having déja vu after the last time had I brought up the several dozen Springfields)
Strong levi-o-sa energy.
100% it's all in the emphasis. It's subtle, but just different enough that you can tell if someone is from the area based on their pronunciation.
For a better example: Versailles, Kentucky. Guess how that one is pronounced.
Oh God,I had an ex from Georgia that would hit me with these. Let's go with "verse-ay-lees".
I will go with ver-sales
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I always assumed it was where the people who settled it were originally from.
And at some places they even reassign them new genders: The coat of arms of Berne Switzerland has a bear with a red penis. The US town: New Berne has a bear without a penis as a coat of arms. This means during the sea transport, Berne's bear outed themselves as Transgender and changed their sex to a lady-bear. (At least in my head cannon)
Almost certainly typical American Puritanism.
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Hey, give them some credit, they have some diversity - there's place in europe, new place in europe, mispronounced place in europe, british ruler, catholic saint in spanish, american president, explorer related to america, and of course native american place/tribe, and random native american word
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Also of note: the name of Important Train Company Man
insert flex tape meme slapping "New" onto the European name
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