Thatnks for the updates, Kimstu. That book Minnesota Geographic Names v17 is a real mine, since Google gives access to the whole thing (it’s out of copyright). I’m still going through it and finding additions and external cites. Strange it doesn’t mention Opole, though.
It’s text about Montevideo looks like it was cribbed verbatim for that other reference. I decided to accept that town, even though it is confusing.
I just travelled the length of the NY state Thruway and saw a few possible names for your list:
Ilion, the ancient Greek name for Troy. The Wikipedia page says " A popular, yet unverified rumor is that the application said Illium, but due to a misspelling or bad penmanship was interpreted as Ilion". This rumor seems to ignore the fact that Ilion is actually the Greek name.
Alloway: maybe named after the town in Scotland?
Newstead: supposedly named for Newstead Abbey in England, but the abbey itself bears the name of a town in England.
Yes, Ilium is a Latinization of that. There’s only a few cities that have two names represented among US names: Jeddo and Tokio for Tokyo; a couple for Trondheim (which has had no few than 4 distinct and unrelated names); and now this. I accept these for regions, but haven’t yet done so for cities. I’ll have to think about this.
Quite possibly. There’s a couple other Alloways in other states, but they have different derivations that wouldn’t necessarily apply here. Wikipedia says nothing, so I’ll have to add it to the Potential additions section.
I’ve run across a few other country homes (which this is) and have ignored them. I’ll think I’ll continue to do that (if only to save some work – this project is becoming a real time sink).
The preceding pages also give a whole raft of other similarly derived placenames, including Borculo MI, Pella IA (not Dutch, but named by a Dutch divine after the Biblical city), Rosiere WI, and Walhain WI.
There’s a large town called “Rockhampton” in Queensland but I’m not familiar with anywhere in Australia called “Rockham”- if it exists, it’d be tiny and highly unlikely to have anywhere in the US named after it.
There’s a Rowena in MN with the same derivation. Also some places with names from Hiawatha, although I don’t remember what they are off hand. I’ll go back later and get them.
Here’s one I’m wondering about: Potamo Township, MN. It’s wikipage doesn’t have an etymology, and the Minnesota book I’m scanning just says
The place on Corfu doesn’t have a wikipage, but it is named either Potamos or Potamus and you can find evidence on-line that it exists. The phrasing of that entry reads to me that it’s not actually named from the island town, but that they didn’t have anything else to day about it. It’s not too uncommon in the book to read that some name is found in N other states and/or some other country and nothing about it actually being named for any of them. This seems to be the same thing, except they only cite a single place in another country. Agree or not?
Great find with that railway book. I’ll note that the MN book I’m scanning often doesn’t give a derivation for railway stops.
Also I note that it has an Ebro MN, which has very similar wording to Potamo, but the Wikipage for that one does accept it. Likely written by different people, though. Or maybe because there is a page for the Ebro River.
Tough call, especially since potamos just means “river” in Greek, and there seems to be one in Potamo Township. There’s also a classical philosopher called Potamo, and a family of water plants called Potamogeton, of which there are a lot in Minnesota waterways. Maybe the MN locale is indeed named after a Greek one but it sounds pretty open-ended to me.
The Ebro etymology sounds a little more definite but I don’t know anything else about it.
OK, maybe a bit too neat (and I’d be surprised if a river can look like a dot; if he actually said that, he was either rationalizing or thinking of a semicolon) but it’s not too unlikely. Anyone have any thoughts one way or the other?
BTW, I changed my mind and am including places like castles, country homes, palaces, etc. even if they’re not in a city. I’ve added a handful that I remember (Alhambra; Letice, Czechia; Newstead Abbey) but there’s several I’ve forgotten.
There are a few more along the old Great Northern line: Berwick, Leeds, knox, Norwich, Penn, Surrey, Churches Ferry, Tunbridge, and York. That list comes from the wiki page on** Rugby, North Dakota**.
Although the discussion currently seems to be trending toward the sensible position that this is a valid and interesting topic in toponymy. If they do suggest a rename, what are you thinking of for possible options?
