Well, fair enough if we’re only counting the incorporated names, but people sometimes refer to the entire Wilkes-Barre/Scranton metro area as the Wyoming Valley. It’s just some weird vagary of Google Maps that it only has it labeled as a single point there in that park.
Hey, Arbor Day! You’ve heard of that, right?
So… is New York, NY the only example of a city and state sharing the exact same name?
NVM
Missouri valley, IA
Michigan City, IN
Virginia City used to be much larger back during the gold rush.
Down the road is Nevada City, MT, another gold rush town that is a preserved ghost town today.
Nevada City, CA, which is the county seat of Nevada County.
There’s a Vermontville in New York as well.
Jefferson City, MO. … well, almost (in 3 different places, note).
Other than the other 22 plus duplicates that MikeS just listed, yes.
Either you’re misunderstanding something, or I am. I don’t see any duplicates on that list except New York, NY.
The duplicates are the 31 other municipalities named “Washington”, and so on.
Years ago I got interested in the question in the OP. So I made up my own list and wrote a Word Ways article on the subject which can be downloaded here. That’s a pdf image of the magazine. I used to have the article on my own web page, but I no longer have one. You may be able to find it in a wayback site.
BTW, my list had some 340 such places. I did find several places with the exact same name as their own state. Other than New York, the only one I can remember is Oklahoma, Oklahoma, which is an old name for Oklahoma City.
How are those examples of a city and state sharing the same name? None of the Washingtons are in Washington state.
As a bit of trivia, although it’s not a US example, the only city I know in which the city name, next highest political unit, and country name are identical is the city of Panama, in the province of Panama, in the Republic of Panama. (The name of the city is actually just “Panama,” rather than Ciudad Panama or other variant.)
So close, though, with Oklahoma City being in Oklahoma County.
Arbor Day - cool.
In 2009 I rode my motorcycle from San Francisco to St. Louis – it was a 2-week business trip to STL so I thought I’d take the bike. On I-80, entering NE, I saw the sign,
“WELCOME TO NEBRASKA, HOME OF ARBOR DAY.”
Really??!! Never knew that before, so I had to snap a picture.
So there I was, it was the middle of the night in a strong pouring rain, the sign lit by my bike’s headlight, parked on the shoulder. And I got my picture.
Here’s a picture (not mine). BTW, what is that mountaintop / hilltop / spire shown on the sign?
[quote=“MikeS, post:40, topic:730335”]
I ran a quick search using Mathematica and the geographic data servers of Wolfram. If we restrict ourselves to cities and towns whose names are exactly those of states, here’s what we have:
[ul][li]Oklahoma, PA[]California: California, MD & 3 smaller cities[]Texas, WI[]Nevada, MO & 3 smaller cities[]Indiana, PA[]Virginia, MN & 2 smaller cities[]Alabama, NY[]Iowa, LA[]Vermont, LA[]Georgia, VT[]Florida, NY & 4 smaller cities[]Wyoming, MI & 9 (!) smaller cities[]Tennessee, IL[]New York, NY[]Oregon, OH & 3 smaller cities[]Kansas, OK & 2 smaller cities[]Ohio, NY & 1 smaller city[]Delaware, OH & 3 smaller cities[]Maine, NY & 2 smaller cities[]Montana, WI[]Maryland, NY[]Louisiana, MO[]Washington, DC & 31 smaller cities[/ul]Any state that’s not on this list does not have a city named after it, or at least not one in Wolfram’s database. If I’ve counted right, there are 27 such states, although eight of those are states with two-word names like “New Hampshire”.[/li][/QUOTE]
27 states without a city / town named after them? In dtilque’s article (here: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4358&context=wordways) he says there are six such states:
That’s from this post: