Several towns and cities across the US are “New” This or “New” That. Some of them are major metropolises (New York, New Orleans); most are just stops on the road (New Berlin, IL, New Salem, MA).
In this thread, compare “New” cities to “Old” cities. I’ll start.
New York: Population: 8 million. One of the largest cities in the world; major financial and cultural center. "Old" York, England: Population: 200,000. Ancient walled city in England dating back to Roman times.
New Orleans: Population: 350,000. Major port city, tourist attraction, party destination, rich in architecture, culture, and history. "Old" Orleans, France: Population: 100,000. Dates back centuries, site of major events in European/Christian history.
New Berlin, IL: Population: 1,000. Stop on the road between Springfield and nowhere. "Old" Berlin, Germany" Population: 3.5 million. Major world city, major European cultural, financial, and tourist center.
New Madrid–A dump of a town in Missouri, population 3,000. Prounouced MAD-rid just to be weird. Best known as the anchor of a minor earthquake fault line.
“Old” Madrid, Spain–A little bigger and better known. It has some art museums and palaces and stuff. New Madrid doesn’t.
The only place I can think of with “Old” in the name at all is Oldham, England. The name apparently just means “old village”. There are a few Newhams around, but I doubt that there is any relation.
I suppose there’s rarely a reason to name a place “old” whatever. It’s not old when you’re naming it.
New York (formerly known as “New Amsterdam”) is at least a little more comparable to Amsterdam.
It actually seems to be fairly common for towns to be pronounced differently from their old namesakes, whether “just to be weird,” or as a way of telling them apart, or as a shibboleth to tell who’s “from around here.” The New Berlin mentioned in the OP is pronounced with the stress on the “Ber.”
New Glasgow, PEI, Canada: A small fishing and farming community with not more than a few thousand people. It’s so small I can’t even find a population figure for it.
Glasgow, Scotland, UK: 0.5 Million people, a major metropolis.
Philadelphia, PA: Population, 1.5 million, home to art, history, and science museums, sports teams, Ben Franklin, the Liberty Bell, etc. New Philadelphia, PA: Uh, not much.
There’s Newton, MA (where I lived for a few years), which is a slight corruption of the original name “Newtown”. The town is not named for the physicist, but the fig cookies are named for the town.
New Brunswick, NJ: 50,000 people, home of Rutgers University.
Brunswick, Lower Saxony, Germany: 250,000 people, capital of the Hanseatic League for 400 years.
Jersey: Island in the English Channel. Population, ~98,000.
New Jersey: State on the US east coast. Stuck in the shadow of NYC (See also: Connecticut). Population, ~9 million. Hampshire: County in southern England. Population, ~170,000.
New Hampshire: State in New England. Population, ~1.3 million.
New Philadelphia, OH: Streets laid out in a grid like Philadelphia. They have a historical site from the 1700s (Schoenbrunn). They have a fancy park with a carousel and a teen center. But still it didn’t quite take off like the original Philadelphia did.
Veliky Novgorod
Population 200 thousand. In the 14th Century, was one of the largest cities in Europe, population reportedly around 400 thousand.
Allegedly founded in the 9th Century, although archaeology dates the oldest stuff to the late 10th Century.
Was the second most important city in Kievan Rus. Later, was the capital of the Novgorod Republic. Has been and important trade center for over a thousand years.
Nizhny Novgorod
Population 1.2 million
Founded in AD 1221.
Has been an important trade center for over 700 years.
“Novgorod” means “new city”.
Naples
The region has been inhabited since the Neolithic.
Greeks colonized it in the second millennium BC.
Has been an important political and commercial center for three thousand years.
The English name is derived from Greek “Neapolis”, meaning “new city”.
