Here in the good ol’ U of K, we have Southampton and Northampton which are very much larger than the original Hampton which has a royal residency but is otherwise modest in size
There’s also these folks, but it’s unclear which real Bay City, if any, they’re named for:
The legend, as quoted in Wikipedia (and which I remember hearing on “American Top 40” in the 1970s) is that the band (which was from Edinburgh, Scotland) wanted to rename themselves after something American-sounding. One of the band members threw a dart at a map of the U.S., but they didn’t like any of the names in the area where it landed (allegedly somewhere in Arkansas), so he threw another dart, which hit near Bay City, MI.
Thanks.
I’d read the article a year-ish ago to answer that question just for myself. I reskimmed the article this morning before posting it here. And I still missed it. :smack: Damn!
Which do you think was the main cause of United Townships of Dysart, Dudley, Harcourt, Guilford, Harburn, Bruton, Havelock, Eyre and Clyde? Yes, that’s a single city. My guess would be a committee that couldn’t make up its mind.
Northampton, Southampton and the Hampton in London (which is home to Hampton Court Palace) were all originally named Hampton independently of each other, after a common Anglo-Saxon place name; it’s not as if one of them gave its name to the others. Southampton and Northampton didn’t get their prefixes until later, to remove ambiguities. In the case of Southampton, you can still see the origin in the fact that the county whose largest city it is is named Hampshire. Also, Southampton, Northampton and the London Hampton are not contiguous or otherwise located close to each other.
Seems likely to me there was some exogenous benefit to uniting, probably gaining eligibility for some provincial or federal subsidy for something.
But otherwise the separate nearby townships hated one another with the white-hot passion usually reserved for academic politics.
So none would yield their name.