# Places named after something you wouldn't expect
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 11, 2014, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312 "2014-08-11T15:54:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2014, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/21 "2014-08-11T21:15:49Z")
Bastrop, Louisiana, was named after a Dutch con man, who swindled everybody in sight on a land deal. He was run out of Louisiana, and went to Texas, and did the same thing there, and sure enough, Bastrop, Texas is named after him too.
Lincoln County Maine, was named after a man who was already dead beforeo President Lincoln was born. He was an ornithologist, too, and Audubon named a species of sparrow after him.
---
### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/22 "2014-08-11T21:46:57Z")
Victoria is the only name borne by a city in Canada, Mexico and the USA. The one in Canada was named after the Queen, but the ones in Texas and Mexico were named for the first president of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria.
Cabool, Missouri, was named by a worker on the railroad being built through the area, because the country around there reminded him of what is now spelled Kabul, Afghanistan, where he had also worked on the railroad that was being constructed by the British through that country. Nearby Texas County, Missouri, was formed and named a few months before the state of Texas was admitted to the union, so it was the first place named Texas in the USA.
Very few counties in the USA are named after non-royal women, but two of them are interesting in their own right. One of them, Dare County NC, was named after Virginia Dare, a girl who died in infancy, but was the first child born in America of English parents. Louisa County, Iowa, was named for Louisa Massey, who avenged the murder of her brother by killing the suspect. One of the few named for someone who was technically a criminal murderer.
---
### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2014, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/23 "2014-08-11T21:59:08Z")
A correction to an above reference. Lincoln County Maine was named for the city of Lincoln, England, not for the well-known Lincoln family who lived in Maine preceding the era of Abraham Lincoln. My apologies.
---
### Author:  [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/24 "2014-08-12T00:36:38Z")
> [@jtur88](#):
>
> […]
>
> Cabool, Missouri, was named by a worker on the railroad being built through the area, because the country around there reminded him of what is now spelled Kabul, Afghanistan, where he had also worked on the railroad that was being constructed by the British through that country. Nearby Texas County, Missouri, was formed and named a few months before the state of Texas was admitted to the union, so it was the first place named Texas in the USA.
> […]
I thought this ironic because, according to an atlas I have, there are no railroads in Afghanistan.
---
### Author:  [@MG1692](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MG1692)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/25 "2014-08-12T01:12:31Z")
Red Square Moscow is not named for the obvious communist connection. Red is a corruption of a Russian word that means beautiful.
Nome Alaska is a spelling error. When drawing the map, a town was known to exist but no one new the name…hence the map was noted name? - Which was miss read and officially named Nome.
---
### Author:  [@MG1692](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MG1692)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/26 "2014-08-12T01:17:53Z")
> [@jtur88](#):
>
> Victoria is the only name borne by a city in Canada, Mexico and the USA. The one in Canada was named after the Queen, but the ones in Texas and Mexico were named for the first president of Mexico, Guadalupe Victoria.
Victoria Kansas was expressly named by its founder George Grant after the Queen of England in 1873
---
### Author:  [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/27 "2014-08-12T01:58:40Z")
> [@johnspartan](#):
>
> Canary Islands are named after an animal, but not the canary. They’re (likely) Canariae Insulae, or Isle of Dogs.
And in fact, the bird is named after the islands, which are named for the dogs.
---
### Author:  [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/28 "2014-08-12T02:02:33Z")
> [@jtur88](#):
>
> Very few counties in the USA are named after non-royal women, but two of them are interesting in their own right. One of them, Dare County NC, was named after Virginia Dare, a girl who died in infancy, but was the first child born in America of English parents. Louisa County, Iowa, was named for Louisa Massey, who avenged the murder of her brother by killing the suspect. One of the few named for someone who was technically a criminal murderer.
Anne Arundel County, Maryland was named for the wife of Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore.
---
### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/29 "2014-08-12T02:08:46Z")
I had always thought Rochester, New York was named after the English city of Rochester. But when I looked it up I discovered it was named after its founder, Nathaniel Rochester.
---
### Author:  [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/30 "2014-08-12T02:17:20Z")
The town in Oregon is named after a prominent early resident and Civil War vet, William H. Boring, not as a description of what it’s like there.
My home town of Lake Oswego was named after Oswego, NY, but the “Lake” part does not come from Oswego Lake in the middle of town. The City of Oswego merged with the growing, adjacent Lake Grove and they smashed the two names together.
---
### Author:  [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/31 "2014-08-12T02:19:20Z")
Well there is Fart Louder Dale Florida named after Dale the loudest farter in the rebel army. But if he could have farted a bit louder he’d have scared the Union army into thinking they had canons.
---
### Author:  [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/32 "2014-08-12T02:22:28Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#):
>
> I thought this ironic because, according to an atlas I have, there are no railroads in Afghanistan.
Never been there to Afghanistan, but there are no functioning railroads in Colombia either, but there once were built by the USA. But corrupt government have problems maintaining such things.
---
### Author:  [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/33 "2014-08-12T02:28:08Z")
> [@MG1692](#):
>
> Red Square Moscow is not named for the obvious communist connection. Red is a corruption of a Russian word that means beautiful.
>
> Nome Alaska is a spelling error. When drawing the map, a town was known to exist but no one new the name…hence the map was noted name? - Which was miss read and officially named Nome.
Nome Sane man Nome Sane?
---
### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/34 "2014-08-12T03:39:33Z")
Norfolk, Nebraska, was originally Northfork, and it got erroneously respelled by the Post Office, and became Norfolk. But local people still pronounce it Nor-Fork.
---
### Author:  [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/35 "2014-08-12T03:45:30Z")
> [@DingoelGringo](#):
>
> Never been there to Afghanistan, but there are no functioning railroads in Colombia either, but there once were built by the USA. But corrupt government have problems maintaining such things.
According to Wikipedia, Colombia has a rail network of 3,300 km, of which about 2,700 km is in current use. In the nineteenth century the original rail network was financed and constructed (and operated) by British and American companies, but hardly by “the USA”. Their are current investment programmes, to build new railways and upgrade existing ones, financed by the UK and China.
---
### Author:  [@EdwardLost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EdwardLost)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/36 "2014-08-12T04:59:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> I had always thought Rochester, New York was named after the English city of Rochester. But when I looked it up I discovered it was named after its founder, Nathaniel Rochester.
An example of something I’ve thought before was interesting: In the Old World, people were named after towns; in the New World, towns are named after people - and so the names reproduce through an intermediate host.
---
### Author:  [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/37 "2014-08-12T08:33:19Z")
> [@snowthx](#):
>
> King County, Washington was originally named for the Vice President Elect under Franklin Pierce, William Rufus DeVane King. In 1986 the county was renamed for Dr. Martin Luther King.
So they renamed it from King County to…King County? That doesn’t really count as renaming in my book.
---
### Author:  [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/38 "2014-08-12T09:16:43Z")
> [@johnspartan](#):
>
> While it is a bridge (and an outer one at that), the Outerbridge in NYC is named after Eugene Outerbridge.
[The Heaviside layer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_layer) of the ionosphere is not called that because it’s heavy or anything like it; it’s named after [British mathematician and physicist Oliver Heaviside](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside).
---
### Author:  [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/39 "2014-08-12T12:02:47Z")
> [@bldysabba](#):
>
> So they renamed it from King County to…King County? That doesn’t really count as renaming in my book.
It seems to me there should be a term for this kind of not-really renaming. But I don’t know what that term is.
> [@MG1692](#):
>
> Nome Alaska is a spelling error. When drawing the map, a town was known to exist but no one new the name…hence the map was noted name? - Which was miss read and officially named Nome
Close. It was a cape, and since the mapmaker didn’t know its name, he wrote “? Name” by the cape. Later, someone misread this “C. Nome” and thought the place was called Cape Nome.
---
### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312/40 "2014-08-12T14:11:49Z")
[Leesburg, Virginia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leesburg,_Virginia) was not named after Robert E. Lee, but after Thomas Lee, one of his relatives who was a lot less famous.
The [Sandwich Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Islands) were not named after local food traditions, but were named after [the Earl of Sandwich](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sandwich), who is reputed to have been so addicted to gambling that he invented a way to bring his lunch to the card table and thus invented the sandwich. So both the food and the islands are named for the guy.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312.md?page=1)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/places-named-after-something-you-wouldnt-expect/695312.md?page=3)