New York, New York.

Factual Questions
61

Yeah, a quick look at a map of Ontario shows we weren’t very original with our toponyms. I mean, in the British Empire, did we really need another London? Never mind Windsor and Chatham and Stratford and Cambridge and… Brussels and Heidelberg and Waterloo and Khartum and Hanover and Uppsala…

In fact, I’m moving to London (ON) soon, and I’ve been looking for some convenient way to refer to it unambiguously without constantly repeating the name of the province. I have some European friends who will no doubt assume I’m moving back to that side of the Ocean. So far I’ve been calling it “London – that less glamorous one over here”, and pointing to the west.

LondON ?
Londontario?

And while we’re on the topic, where does that town’s university get off calling itself what it does, anyway? As far as I’m concerned, only Thunder Bay can claim to have a “university of western Ontario”. :wink:

Anyway, as for the “City, State” convention (in Canada, “City, Province”), it’s not just for ambiguity of multiple same-named communities, but also because both Canada and the US are geographically very large countries. While I might reasonably be expected to recognize the names of capital cities of Canadian provinces/territories (there are only 13), I can’t be expected to be familiar with every village in a sparsely settled region the size of Europe. So when a national news report describes events in a major city such as Montreal, it’s not necessary to specify the province, since that city is well-known to people who live 3000 kilometres away, and even to people who live outside of Canada. But if the national news describes events in Val-d’Or, it’s possible people from four provinces over might not be familiar with this smaller community. In that case, to give some geographic context, it’s common to give the name of the province as well: “Val-d’Or, Quebec”. In a regional newscast directed at an audience from only Quebec, for example, the name of the province would likely be left out. And someone introducing himself and describing his place of residence might simply give the name of the city.

In the United States, where there are over four dozen state capitals, and many of them are fairly small and obscure places little known outside their states, even this exception doesn’t really apply. And there are so many towns in a country that big with 300 million inhabitants that it makes sense to add an extra georeference to it. Aside from the biggest cities with the largest cultural, economic, or political importance, it’s common to use this sort of binomial form. I have a feeling it’s also related to the way people identify with their state of residence/origin, as well.

62

Forgive the nitpick, but this is s peeve: There are 17 Parises.

63

The New England States (U.S.) are especially guilty of this type of thing. The name New England should be the first clue. There are six New England states and they are small compared to most of the others. I can be in any single one of them in two hours from here but boy did those settlers lack originality. There are duplicate place names all over and they aren’t even that far apart. They just plagiarized the hell out of the town and city names in England off of a rather short list and apparently the state founders cheated off each others answers as well. You can’t responsibly reference many New England town names without the state appended unless you are sure the person knows what you are referring to. There could be another one in a different state not very far away.

I agree that it is just good form anywhere for people that you aren’t familiar with. The New York state versus New York City issue is important for people that live in New York state far outside New York City because the demographics and environment are completely different even geographically. I have a SIL who has a habit of confusing the hell out of people she doesn’t know because of where she lives. She lives in Indiana and can talk about it on and on. Don’t mention Hoosiers or the Midwest though if you try to make conversation. She knows nothing about that because her state is Pennsylvania.

64

Few New Yorkers would ever announce themselves as coming from “New York, New York” (unless they were speaking to an obvious gibbering idiot). Manhattanites and some from other boroughs would say New York City, and most outer borough residents would mention the borough name and (maybe) New York City for orientation purposes. I’m originally from Staten Island and would just say that to another person in this country, but might add NYC or New York to clarify matters to one of them European provincial types who don’t get out much.

65

umm, well, YEAH! Are you unfamiliar with Paris, Texas? Moscow, Idaho? Vienna, Wisconsin? Dunno about Helsinikis but there’s a fairly large Athens, Georgia as well as a less impressive Rome and Albany in that state; Ontario has a London, Massachusetts has a Cambridge, and Alabama has a pretty respectable Birmingham.

but New York is “the City”.

There ain’t no other.

66

I’m thinking now of a friend who worked for a nationwide chain of test-taking schools in Thailand that had catalogues with details of schools in the US that students could apply to, state by state. These were mostly for graduate school. They had to post signs telling the students that Chicago was in Illinois, because so many of the students wanting to study in Chicago asked why those schools weren’t listed. They didn’t realize they needed to look under Illinois.

67

They like to think that but the first time I heard the term “The City” used in that context was in college where lots of people were from NYC. Believe it or not, a huge percentage of Americans have never been to NYC and lots express no interest in ever going. I have barely been there myself being well traveled and living a little north in the Boston area. I liked it just fine the very short times I was there but NYC has a major arrogance problem in regards to the way that other Americans regard it. I would venture to say that most people over 30 wouldn’t live there housing paid.

68

Bingo.

In Canada and the USA, addresses are ALWAYS written with the state/province/territory name. On any letter, package, any website, any business address, ANY formal refernece to an address, the subfederal jurisdiction is always applied. So we just get used to thinking of it that way.

The fact that place names repeat is rarely an issue except in specific cases; I have never known anyone to confuse London, England and London, Ontario, or get mixed up between Kingston, Ontario versus Kingston, Jamaica versus Kingston, NY. I live in Burlington, Ontario and have never been vexed by confusion with any of the other Burlingtons.

But when you see it written “City, State” or “City, Province” all the time, it becomes habit. The USA and Canada are VERY federal; their federal organization is one of their defining features.

69

Yes, but are those people New Yorkers?

Like we’re supposed to care about the opinions of people who aren’t New Yorkers or something?

70

I’m not sure I’ve met people from an actual country who are as stuck on their place of origin as many Texans are.

My college buddy said he thought that when he went to California, there would be a general “my state is better than yours” joking contest, but he found that people just gave him a cold stare. He quit that, pretty much. He thought all states made a huge deal about themselves in the same way. For instance, I have no real idea why I’m supposed to be so impressed that Texas was a country for about 10 years. If it was so awesome, why did you petition to become part of the USA?

71

I cannot make sense of these statements.

72

I once helped an Afghani guy who was trying to drive to the Afghani Embassy in Washington, DC for some reason (I think he started in NYC). He had a GPS and it took me a couple minutes to realize that he’d somehow managed to set it for some random small town in Washington state that had a similar name to the street the embassy on on in Washingon, DC. :smack: He didn’t realize that there was a state called Washington as well, and the national capital is usually placed in listes of states under District of Columbia to avoid confusion. I wondered if he really could’ve gotten all the way to the West Coast.

73

Nitpick: The people are Afghans, the monetary currency is the Afghani.

But that’s like the wife’s cousins. They never studied in the US but did look into it at one point and wanted me to tell them about the University of Washington DC. I said there was no such school. They said sure there was and showed me some info. It was the U of Washington in Seattle.

74

The SiL comes from Indiana PA

75

And of course there’s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Pittsburg (no H), Kansas.

76

There is a Mexico, Russia, Poland, Athens, and Berlin, New York. Small towns, but there they are. One would be better off saying, “I’m from Upstate NY”.

77

I agree to an extent. In the past especially people from Brooklyn were very proud of their “city.” In fact Brooklyn was an independent city.

I found that people from Brooklyn or Queens or the Bronx, will say they are from those places, to locals or to people from the area but use New York if the distance is greater

For instance, I know of people from Brooklyn. If someone from Philadelphia or Boston would ask, “Where are you from,” they would say “Brooklyn.” But if someone from Seattle says, “Where are you from”? The same person would say New York

78

Not to mention Pittsburg, CA (I usually don’t). Right next to Antioch, which I’ll bet you thought was in Turkey.

BTW, concerning names simply being randomly chosen, look at the names of a lot of the towns along US 2 in northern Montana. Malta, Havre, Glasgow, … The standard explanation you hear is echoed in this news article about Malta:

In California, railroad siding names yielded “Coalinga”. Originally “Coaling [Station] A” - the pronunciation mutated so as to bury the origin, and sound far more exotic.

79

BTW, I’ve always been suspicious of the “spun a globe” bit. The names chosen seem to be randomly selected from European names. If they actually had spun the globe, I might have expected them to land on a “Peking” or a “Bombay”.

Maybe they threw darts at a map of Europe.

80

One that’s confused me a few times is Ontario, California. Fedex has some kind of hub there, and there have been a few times I’ve seen packages that originated in California appear to teleport themselves to Ontario in just a few hours, and then make their way back across the US. (I live in Ohio.) Never really got confused for more than a few moments, but I can imagine somebody accidentally traveling to Canada instead of California if they’re not careful.