I work as a translator in Japan, and am frequently asked to transliterate Japanese city names into English. The Japanese will have the city/village/town name, plus city/village/town after it to specify its size. Thus, “Niigata City”, “Yahiko Village”, etc. When transliterating, I try to leave this off as it seems unnatural in English, but when asked why I have no explanation. It then occurred to me that I honestly HAVE no idea why these appellations are left off in English. Chicago is “The City of Chicago”, but no one says “Chicago City”, just as there is the “Town of Normal, llinois” but no one says “Normal Town”. It’s just “Chicago, Illinois” and “Normal, Illinois”. Yet the “City of Kansas, Missouri” seems invariably referred to as “Kansas
City”, just as there is an “Orange City, California”. Anyone have an idea why is “City”, etc. dropped after many town, etc. names, but kept in others? Style? Or are people just too lazy to say the whole thing?
If there is another geographical unit with the same name, English-speakers will use the “So-and-So City” construction. Thus, the city of New York is referred to as New York City to distinguish it from the state of New York; the city of Mexico is called Mexico City to distinguish it from the state of Mexico or the nation of Mexico. However, certain cities are actually formally named So-and-So City. Thus, it’s not “the City of Kansas, Missouri”, it’s “the City of Kansas City, Missouri”. This is often done for the same reason “the City of New York” is informally dubbed “New York City”, to distinguish the city from something else with the same name, but not always: sometimes it’s just tacked on to (for want of a better way to put it) make the name sound right: “Silver City”, say. Often, the first part of the name is being used in an adjectival sense (“What kind of city? A silver city”), but it’s not always that, either. Carson City, Nevada, could have just as well been called Carson, Nevada (Reno, presumably named after someone named “Reno” as Carson City is presumably named after someone named “Carson”, is not “Reno City”.) Cities and towns tend to be named by their founders, so the whole process is a somewhat idiosyncratic one.
It’s not “City of Kansas, Missouri” any more, but it was (at least officially) from 1853 to 1889. In 1889, they officially changed it to “Kansas City, Missouri,” but I seem to recall reading that nearly everybody called it “Kansas City” anyway.
There are cities in California which are BLANK City.
One such example is Temple City, another is Culver City. And their legal names are City of Temple City and City of Culver City.
There isn’t any system to it. You just have to know it by rote or look it up.
And, by the way, it isn’t Orange City, CA, it’s just plain Orange, CA. There is an Orange City, IA but it doesn’t have anything to do with the citrus fruit. It was named by Dutch settlers after William of Orange.