I was reading a couple of blog spots by people in Charlotte, North Carolina and there is a debate whether major newspapers should make Charlotte one of those cities that doesn’t need a qualifer when it’s mentioned.
For instance, newspapers will say, “He’s from Chicago,” not “He’s from Chicago, IL” or “The car crash was in San Francisco,” not “The car crash was in San Francisco, CA.”
Charlotte has grown a lot and the blog columinst were saying it’s big enough so newspapers don’t need to always say “Charlotte, NC.”
I’ve never been there but I definately think it’s big enough and distinct enough.
If someone says they are from “Charlotte” I know what they’re talking about. I don’t think “which one?” or “Charlotte where?”
But so are a lot of other places. Tallahasse, Chattanooga, Albuquerque, Sacramento.
I notice qualifiers used pretty routinely by New Yorkers - perhaps echoing a cultural habit of downplaying the significance or familiarity of other US cities. Typically it’s done only with places outside the Boston-Washington corridor.
I remember when the AP Stylebook (the bible for these types of things) dropped the “CAlifornia” designation for San Jose. They debated it, I think, for about two years. The two deciding factors were whether the average reader would instantly identify San Jose with being THAT San Jose and the amount of stories coming from that dateline.
They finally let the city ID stand alone when Silicon Valley took off and all sorts of business stories started coming from San Jose. I think Charlotte meets the first category, but I don’t know about the second.
This consideration, rather than size, makes me think the NC is not needed. Asheville, Raleigh, Durham and Winston-Salem work in a similar way. I’d add the NC for Greensboro, Wilmington, Fayetteville, and smaller towns, though.
Nashville stands pretty much alone in spite of there being other towns and cities with that name.
Biloxi and Meridian probably don’t need the MS, but Jackson does!
Oh gosh, I’m glad someone else said this. When I hear “Charlotte,” I mentally go through a process of “North Carolina …no, South … wait, North? Maybe? South? No?”
It’s nobody’s fault but my own, and it’s too bad that Charlotte is penalized for it, but I think many people are confused on this issue and would actually make good use of the clarification provided by “Charlotte, NC.”
Additionally, Charleston is in SC, and I think that breeds a little confusion. While certainly different, both start with Charl and if someone is not overly familiar with the geography I can see the mix up.
I think Charlotte doesn’t need a qualifier, not only because there is no other Charlotte of note in another state/location, but because Charlotte is “on the map” (for sports fans anyway), between the Carolina Panthers playing there, the erstwhile NBA Hornets franchise and now their replacement Bobcats, and UNC-Charlotte being in Division I.
This is not true of the other cities you listed, even if they’re of similar size. I have never heard of Asheville. Raleigh-Durham I know as an airport location. Winston-Salem sounds familiar but I’m not sure why. I think because they’re both brands of cigarettes (even though I don’t smoke, my Dad used to). So I wouldn’t necessarily have placed Asheville, Winston or Salem in North Carolina – I’d guess they were in “A” Carolina but might well have guessed South Carolina. I also can’t rule out guessing Georgia, especially for Asheville (sorry).
I know UNC Chapel Hill and Duke are close by to each other, but don’t know how close “Chapel Hill” is to Charlotte. No, wait – thanks to the whole Duke Lacrosse team affair from a few years ago, I can remember that Nifong, the DA in charge of the witch hunt, was based out of Durham.
Dunno if this is a hijack, but while I would agree that these place names are big enough in the American consciousness anyway to “not need a state qualifier”, the fact is that they may be bigger in the collective consciousness than the state itself. Meaning – how many people could correctly tell you what state those cities are in, if they wanted to qualify it?
Take Chattanooga. I know it has a Choo-Choo song, and it’s in the South somewhere. I’m going to guess Tennessee. But that’s a guess*. An educated one, since I’m sure I’ve seen the qualifier before, but I certainly wouldn’t bet money on it.
I happen to know Albuquerque is in New Mexico because I’ve been there. But prior to going there, in my mind it was “somewhere in the SouthWest”, where the Dodgers have a minor league team, is where the Springfield Isotopes were threatening to move to*, and is somewhere that Bugs Bunny always forgot to take a left turn. I wouldn’t have put money on my ability to say for sure if it was in New Mexico or, say, Nevada.
So one could make the case that to be “big enough to not need a qualifier” there needs to be an unspoken understanding that one KNOWS the qualifier but is leaving it out, versus just recognizing the name for some other random reason.
*I just looked Chattanooga and Albuquerque up in Wikipedia, and found that (a) yes, Chattanooga is in TN, and (b) holy crap, the Albuquerque AAA team (re)named themselves the Isotopes in case of reality following fiction. AWESOME!!
Yes for all except “Bruges”. Don’t know anything about it offhand. Belgium perhaps?
I suppose you meant that as a slight, but I don’t take it that way. I think I know geography fairly well, compared to the average person. But it is not a particular interest of mine, just a matter of how much background information I’ve absorbed over time. While I was admittedly fuzzy on a given location (and I’ll point out I was in fact right for most of my “guesses” – I just looked up “Bruges” and it is in Belgium), I’m going to make a WAG that 80+% of the US population would be completely wrong on at least one of them as well.
Really now, WHY would you know anything about Chattanooga, Tennessee, if you are not from the area, except for the song “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”? Because you’ve spent time staring at a map of the USA for fun at some point, right? I’ve done that, by virtue of a game called “The Game of the States” I played as a kid, and which is why I have some idea of the state capitals and major industry/agricultural products of all 50 states (well, as it was from 25-30+ years ago anyway – not much steel working any more in Pennsylvania). But that was many years ago and it’s not something important enough to me to keep fresh in my mind. And I’m sure most people have NEVER invested the mental energy to learn factoids like that.
And come on back at you – are you really putting Chattanooga, Schenectady and Winston-Salem on a par of world cultural significance as Milan, Budapest or Lisbon?!
ETA: What percent of born-and-bred Americans could correctly identify the state for Kansas City, who would otherwise be able to say that it’s home to a Major League team, known for its Barbecue, and the subject of blues/rock songs? Would you pull the same “ignorance is nothing to be pround of” line, or (like me) find it an amusing and illuminating insight into how different people assign different weights to different pieces of information?
Not bragging about it, certainly, but a certain smugness about places that “don’t matter” could bespeak the busy, savvy metropolitan dweller. Ideally, of course, she’d be able to find far-away hot spots currently in the news, even if she mixed up Michigan, Minnesota, and Manitoba.
Not to be dense, but why wouldn’t newspapers always include qualifiers, if only to make sure that Joe Geographicignoranceface isn’t confused? Is space really that valuable that you can’t include at least the two-letter abbreviation?
I’m putting them all on the same status as far as needing a qualifier is concerned. If you have to qualify Chattanooga at all, it suggests it’s among several you have to distinguish as to which you mean. Name another of any of the cities I have mentioned. If all you know is that Chattanooga is “somewhere down South” that at least means you have heard of it, even if only in the Choo-choo song. If you don’t know where it is then adding the state name isn’t showing any more erudition.
KC the same way. It’s in the midwest and there are two of them – across the state line from each other. Knowing which state just means you want to be more specific about which side of town.
Springfield needs a a qualifier. There are several of them. Franklin needs one since there’s one in almost every state. More than one in some cases.
Adding NC to Charlotte is redundant. If you don’t know which state it’s in and you plan to go there, you’ll get a map. But there’s only one significant Charlotte.
FWIW, there’s a Milan in Tennessee. It’s pronounced MY-lan and it would need qualifying if you pronounce it Mi-LON.