Yes, in NY, ‘town’ does mean the same as ‘township’ in other states. And township has a specific meaning in many other states such as your Ohio. It’s not just any locality, but rather a square area based on the Public Lands Survey System. This survey system was first applied to the old Northwest Territory of which Ohio was a part. It was not applied to the original 13 states, such as NY. So a town in NY is the same as township elsewhere, but it may not be a 6x6 mile square area.
More than you ever wanted to know about municipalities in New York: Administrative divisions of New York (state) - Wikipedia
Basically, with a few exceptions, mostly involving NYC, every county is divided into towns (which may include villages and hamlets) and/or cities (which are independent of towns). Cities, towns, and villages are distinguished not by population but by form of government.
The Tonawanda situation (large town called Tonawanda, two smaller cities called Tonawanda and North Tonawanda) is not unusual and can sometimes be confusing. I live in a city in NYS (though not one of the Tonawandas) which is adjacent to a town with the same name. The town, which takes up a much greater geographic area, has about 10K more people. And yes, when people ask where you live, it’s common to say “City of ____” or “Town of ____.” As I said, confusing.
Most Ohio townships aren’t 6 mile squares either. A lot of the state was already claimed when that was decided, so there are big chunks of the states that used metes and bounds, or other square sizes like 5 miles.
The city formerly known as “East Detroit” (now known as Eastpointe because Detroit is icky) is on Detroit’s northern border. At least it’s the easternish part of the north border. True East Detroit would be where the Gross Pointes are.
This one is a cheat, but feels like it fits in here somehow. Kansas City, Kansas is smaller than Kansas City, Missouri. The Missouri one is older and predates the establishment of the Kansas Territory itself. However, to the uninformed you might assume that the version where the city and state match, as logic would normally dictate, would be the more “proper” entity.
West Orange, NJ (population 48,000) and East Orange, NJ (pop. 64,000) are both larger than Orange, NJ (pop. 31,000). South Orange is smaller.
No North Orange, though.
On Long Island, there’s Northampton, Southampton, Westhampton, and East Hampton. Unfortunately, Hampton, NY is more than 300 miles away, so these wouldn’t count for getting all the directions in.
For that matter, South America is bigger than the United States of America, in both land mass and population. (Of course comparing a continent to a country has got to be cheating.)
I think this example disqualifies on several grounds. One is the reason you mention, that it’s apples and oranges to compare a country (in the sense of a unified political entity) to a continent; another reason is that South America is the “original” America in the sense that it was called America before North America (and, by extension, the United States) was.
But as an apropos, I’ve always had a nerdy interest in the naming history of continents (not that there are many names to keep track of in that field). My favourite is Australia, named out of disappointment over not finding the long-sought “southern land”, Terra Australis (expected to be much larger than what we now know as Australia). America, in turn, has the distinction of being the only continent named after a historically verifiable person.
I was gonna say, while there is no “East Side” as a conjugate to the North, West, and South Sides, there is a neighborhood/official community area known as East Side. It is in a part of Chicago known as the Southeast Side. We also have the Southwest Side, and Northwest Side. Those can be further described with terms like “near” and “far.” The Southeast Side, though, doesn’t take either of those qualifiers. The North, West, and South asides also can.
North Haverbrook really came into its own when it got a monorail.
I’ve always wanted to visit North Haverbrook and see its giant bouncy castle and the zoo with fighting animals.
THIS is the first thing that came to mind. I grew up in the area.
Do you remember a local commercial (I don’t remember what the product was) about a spy from “East Covina”?
Here it is
There’s a North Bay in Ontario. I can’t believe in the whole wide world there isn’t a Bay city, or East Bay, West Bay, or South Bay, but why spoil a good post by actually googling?
Bay City in Michigan. Didn’t even need to google for that one.
Of course, not every direction city is named for a nearby city. Some are just geographically descriptive names or they’re named after some geographic feature that has a direction in its name. North Bay is among the former as is North Bend OR that I mentioned in the OP and South Bend IN. I don’t know of any in the latter group off-hand, but I’m sure there’s some out there somewhere.
In Peru we don’t have “direction cities.” Maybe it’s a grammatical thing because you can’t easily turn cardinal directions into adjectives, “Lima del Sur” or “Cusco del Oeste” don’t really roll of the tongue,
Somewhat confusingly, there is now a totally different York, the “Regional Municipality,” which lies north of Toronto and now has more people in it than any of the three former cities of York, East York, and North York that are now part of Toronto.
Why they chose to name this region “York” is a total mystery to me, because no subcomponent of it was called York. There was originally a York County, but it got its name from the York that is now in the middle of Toronto, which is not a part of - in fact, isn’t even adjacent to - York Region. York Region includes some big towns, like Markham, Vaughan and Richmond Hill, as well as the smaller but beautiful-name-bearing Aurora, but nope, they stuck with the ugly name from a town that isn’t a part of them anymore.
I think whomever comes up with new names in Ontario does it either by committee or out of spite. When they decided to merge the city of Trenton with a few tiny surrounding hamlets, they fell upon the name of “Quinte West,” which is maybe the ugliest and stupidest place name in Canada. There is no region or town called Quinte, or Quinte East. Why they didn’t just call it Trenton no one can explain. The Region of Leeds and Grenville sounds like it was named that because no one could decide on which name to go with and despite the fact those two names are largely lost to history (its biggest town, by far, is Brockville.)
On the other hand, Panama recently split off the western part of the Province of Panama as a new province, Panama Oeste. And there is the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. But these are provinces or states rather than cities.
There is also the official name of the country of Uruguay, República Oriental del Uruguay. It’s simply meant to say that the country lies east of the Uruguay river, but in English it is traditionally translated as the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, which gives it a nicely exotic but somewhat misleading ring. There is, of course, no Western or Occidental Republic of Uruguay - the west bank of the river is part of Argentina, but there is an administrative division (a “department”) in Argentina that is also named Uruguay.
Speaking of countries, the case of North Macedonia comes to mind. That name is a compromise solution that ended a long dispute between that country and the neighbouring country of Greece (which has a region also named Macedonia).
And of course you have the case of South Sudan, which seceded from Sudan in 2011, making it the most recently established sovereign country in the world.