In addition to all those French place names with mangled pronunciation - there are probably a few like Swanzey, NH (named after Swansea, Wales) that are poorly spelled.
A NYT piece today mentions what seems like a rarity - a US place name with Muslim roots - Elkader, Iowa - named after Abd al-Qādir an Islamic scholar, politician and military leader.
Northern Virginia used to have a Berlin near Leesburg but it was renamed Lovettsville. They have an Oktoberfest every year. According to what I was told of the town history, most of the town founders were Pennsylvania Dutch from Lancaster County, PA rather than recent immigrants from Germany, so you have a case where the town may have been named after a place that was a cultural memory rather than an immediate one.
There is currently a Vienna, VA near Fairfax, but it was apparently originally called Ayr Hill, and was renamed Vienna via a sizable donation to the town from a local resident.
There’s also Mahomet, Illinois, just outside Champaign.
Also Medina and Mecca (township) in Ohio.
Damn. Just had along post get chomped when I switched windows. Fucking iPad.
Short version: linguistic/cultural outliers, like the Arab/Muslim ones above.
My contribution: Kiryas Joel, a seriously special and politically hazardous village not far upstate from NYC. Read the Wiki.
And various Bagdads in several states.
There are a lot of Oxfords in the US and elsewhere.
Oxford, Alabama
Oxford, Arkansas
Oxford, Connecticut
Oxford, Florida
Oxford, Georgia
Oxford, Idaho
Oxford, Indiana
Oxford, Iowa
Oxford, Kansas
Oxford, Kentucky
Oxford, Maine
Oxford, Maryland
Oxford, Massachusetts
Oxford, Michigan
Oxford, Mississippi
Oxford, Nebraska
Oxford Township, New Jersey
Oxford (town), New York
Oxford (village), New York
Oxford, North Carolina
Oxford, Ohio
Oxford, Pennsylvania
Oxford, West Virginia
Oxford, WisconsinIf you want to hear shameless disregard for original pronunciations, ask someone from New London, CT how they pronounce the name of the river at whose mouth they are situated.
Thames, (rhymes with James), unlike the original in London.
I cringe whenever I hear it.
The tradition of settlers carrying their old names with them did not stop with European immigrants. Driving across New York state (from Michigan) one encounters LOTS of familiar names: Avon, Utica, Bloomfield, Rochester, Lyons, Dundee, Oxford, Troy, Clinton, Auburn, Bath, Genesee, and Livingston are all names of cities, villages, townships, or Counties in Southeast Michigan that were brought directly from cities and villages in upstate New York by settlers from that area. That does not even include places where the “New York” name was later changed such as Lake Orion that was settled as New Canandaigua.
There are similar carry-forwards in Northeast Ohio from New York and Pennsylvania and in Southeast Ohio from Pennsylvania and Virginia.
I doubt this is true even along the East Coast, but is more obviously false the farther you go into the interior (given the gazillion places named after their first settler, Native American names, geographical features or just whimsy).
Since Rome, N.Y. has been mentioned we should not forget New Rome, Ohio (a name that shall live in infamy).
That’s pretty common.
For example:
Bolivar, OH…BOL uh ver (Rhymes with Oliver)
Lima, OH…LYE ma (like the bean rather than LEE ma like the city)
Medina, OH…meh DINE uh
Mantua, OH…MAN oh way (the T being lost somewhere in the past)
Rio Grande, OH…RYE oh GRAND
or my favorite for being improbable
Berlin, OH…BURR lun
I’ve mentioned in past threads on this topic that one of the two standard pronunciations of Norfolk, NY, is NOR-fork. It’s between Massena and Potsdam, which is just north of Canton. Further south we have a bunch of towns named for the family of early landowner James de LeRay de Chaumont, the last being also the name of a French city pronouncd through the nose, but the NY village is like a Persian Three Stooges movie: Shah-MOE. Marathon is, fittingly, 26 miles north of Binghamton. Liverpool is a Syracuse suburb, Rochester suburbs include Greece and Brighton, while Buffalo has Lancaster. Batavia lies between them.
Alsp in New York State, Russia is north of Poland, and both are west of Salisbury and Stratford. , which are in turn west of Troy and Sodom.
The North Carolina coast sports Bath and New Bern. Inland, Oxford is north of Durham.
Toledo is in Ohio, New Madrid in Missouri,
Along the Mississippi, as well as the Nile, Cairo is upriver from Memphis, while Alexandria is on the coast near the Delta.
Then there’s New Paltz, NY. Funny thing is, there is no old Paltz. It’s actually named after the Pfalz, or Palatinate.
Nice connection, but:
[nitpick]
[ul]
[li]In Egypt, Cairo is downriver from Memphis.[/li][li]In Louisiana, Alexandria is neither “along the coast” (it’s more than 100 miles inland) nor “along the Mississippi” (it’s on the Red River, about 50 miles from the confluence) unless you are really prepared to stretch things.[/li][/ul]
[/nitpick]