While traveling I noticed a minor trend. Why are there so many towns & cities in upstate New York with Greek names:
Utica
Syracuse
Troy
Ithaca
and many more
Was it a trend during colonial times or much later?
Thanks
There are hundreds of classical names for towns in Upstate New York. Too many for one easy explanation. However, the Greek nation had a revolutionary episode in the 1820s that was considered to be inspired by and parallel to our own revolution. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made upstate a booming economy to which many people flocked. Because the two events occurred together, many towns were given classical names in honor of the Greeks.
I’d say it’s more that those are college towns. The ancient Greeks are widely considered to be intellectual, or at least worthy objects of study for modern intellectuals, so college towns tend to get Greek names. See also Athens, OH and many other states.
How about a shout out for my former hometown, Greece, NY, a suburb of Rochester. According to the wikipedia entry, “The Town of Greece was established in 1822 …The name Greece was selected because of the contemporary struggle of Greece for independence from Turkey.”
And Athens, NY! But it doesn’t really have anything to do with colleges being nearby. Most of those cities were settled in the early 19th century and had names before the local institutes of higher learning (many of which are now part of SUNY) were established.
According to Stewart, both Athens OH and Athens GA were named such because colleges were intended to be founded in those towns.
Troy NY was the first classical name given in 1789. It kind of set the tone for the rest of upstate NY along with Seneca Lake, which was not named after the Roman philosopher, but still gave a classical influence anyway.
This was actually used as a joke in a Three Stooges movie (!!)
"Our story begins in Ithaca… No, not that Ithaca (showing a map of the island off Greece), This Ithaca (showing map pf upstate New York,.*. It was in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, one of the Norman Maurer-produced full length movies with Curly Joe, made during the “Hercules” boom in the early 1960s.
Back when these towns were being settled, Greek was part of any middle- to upper-class education, taught (and expected) in colleges and even high schools (Heinlein notes that his ancestors learned it, and I pointed out that Helen Keller did, too). It’s not really surprising that so many places were given classic names – they were o familiar to the people doing the naming.
And it wasn’t only New York. I always thought it interesting and strange that the Elysian Fields were in Hoboken, New Jersey, right across the Hudson from Manhattan.
There was a big ancient Greek revival in the early 19th century. There was a lot of new scholarship done on the ancient Greeks at the time, so that, for instance, there are standard reference works on the ancient Greeks still used today are just updated versions of 19th century works. There was a fad for (pseudo-)classical Greek architecture at the time. The ancient Greeks were held up as being the most important precursors of modern democracy. There were a lot of American towns given Greek names (particularly in the South, as I recall).
This is interesting now that you mention it:
Troy, AL
Athens, GA (home of the University of Georgia)
Alexandria, LA (Greek name of an Egyptian city)
Memphis, TN (also a Greek name of an Egyptian city, right?)
Corinth, MS
There are certainly many, many more than those.
As mentioned, Greece.
Macedon (where I lived)
Egypt
Also:
Chili
Mexico
What else?
Not 100% but there’s Athens, Attica, Babylon, Bethlehem, Brutus, Cairo, Caledonia, Canaan, Carthage, Cicero, Cincinnatus, Corfu, Corinth, Delhi, Eden, Elma, Fabius, Fredonia, Goshen, Greece, Hector, Hemlock, Homer, Ilion, Ithaca, Jericho, Jordan, Latham, Livonia, Lysander, Macedon, Malta, Manlius, Marathon, Marcellus, Minerva, Mount Sinai, New Lebanon, Olean, Ovid, Palmyra, Phoenicia, Phoenix, Rome, Romulus, Sardinia, Savona, Scio, Scipio Center, Sodus, Syracuse, Troy, Utica, Vestal, and West Seneca
IRC, Ypsilanti, Michigan got its name from a Greek Patriot.
I can’t find a link to verify or disclaim it anywhere.
I never knew this . . . Ypsilanti, Michigan
Very cool stuff.
Funny thing . . . I always assumed **Ypsilanti ** was an Indian name, like so many other names in Michigan.
Of course, there’s another familiar name in that site. . . Judge Augustus Woodward, after whom Woodward Avenue was named:
That fellow really got around.
Seneca Lake, West Seneca, and the rest take their name from the native American tribe that was native to Western New York.