# Towns in your state named after foreign places **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 22, 2006, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792 "2006-05-22T19:05:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![YaWanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/bbce88/32.png) [@YaWanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YaWanna)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/21 "2006-05-22T23:19:38Z")
[QUOTE=Push You Down] Washington state has Tokio. That always cracks me up. [/QUOTE] Huh? Lived in Washington (we PNW’erners hate it when people add “state,” but that’s neither here nor there) for about 8 years, never heard of it. Googled it & got nuttin.’ Are you funnin’ us? ---
**Author:** ![racer72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/racer72/32/3075_2.png) [@racer72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racer72)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/22 "2006-05-22T23:26:42Z")
[QUOTE=YaWanna] Huh? Lived in Washington (we PNW’erners hate it when people add “state,” but that’s neither here nor there) for about 8 years, never heard of it. Googled it & got nuttin.’ Are you funnin’ us? [/QUOTE] It is more of a neighborhood name, it is not attached to any city or town. It is in the Spokane area. ---
**Author:** ![Winston\_Smith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e95f7d/32.png) [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/23 "2006-05-22T23:29:13Z")
[QUOTE=jjimm] For the hamsters’ sakes, you need to exclude New Englanders from this thread. [/QUOTE] Gloucester Reading Salisbury Waltham To name but a few… My first thought was that Britons would have a hard time naming places named for foreign cities. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2006, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/24 "2006-05-22T23:47:49Z")
There are krillions of these in Ontario. Just a few off the top of my head: Bath (which has the Bath Water Filtration Plant), London, Paris, Windsor, Pontypool, Peterborough, Madoc, Hanover, Berlin (now Kitchener), Waterloo, Cambridge, Breslau, Wilno, Stratford, Scarborough, Whitby… The weird thing about going to the old country is seeing familiar place names in their original surroundings… ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/25 "2006-05-23T00:07:05Z")
[QUOTE=Winston Smith] My first thought was that Britons would have a hard time naming places named for foreign cities. 🙂 [/QUOTE] There’s a Toronto in England… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![swampbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampbear/32/467_2.png) [@swampbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampbear)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/26 "2006-05-23T00:12:27Z")
In Jawja we have: Rome Athens Berlin (pronounced **Ber** -lin Vienna (pronounced Vi- **enn** -a Cairo (pronounced **Kay** -ro Bremen Lyons Corinth Damascus Geneva Sardis Bethlehem Oxford Ephesus Dublin I know there’s more, just can’t think right now. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/27 "2006-05-23T00:31:47Z")
A few more from California : Newcastle Ben Lomond Saratoga Sebastopol (oddly enough, actually named after the battle) Pittsburg (they didn’t like the spelling of the PA one) Antioch Cambria ---
**Author:** ![beebee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@beebee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beebee)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/28 "2006-05-23T03:29:43Z")
there is a bagdad, arizona. i had two cousins in the middle east for awhile, so a bunch of us went on up and made our own little “invasion of bagdad” movie. the residents didn’t think much of us, but a least the cousins got a laugh out of it. florence, arizona is the home of the arizona state prison. useless bits of information - not named for places, but ajo means garlic (ajo, arizona). jerome was named after winston churchhill’s grandfather. ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/29 "2006-05-23T04:10:24Z")
In Hawaii, we have zero. The only English names I can think of are Pearl City on Oahu and Captain Cook on the Big Island. Since each island is technically a town (all of Oahu is Honolulu), there can be some debate if Pearl City should be counted. Or if we should count towns/districts with English names, like Hickam Housing as part of Honolulu, etc. It can get confusing, but suffice to say there’s no foreign names. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/30 "2006-05-23T04:54:51Z")
Off the top of my head, there’s: Verdun (where I’ll be moving at the end of June - actually it’s part of Montreal now) Lachine(! - also part of Montreal) Venise-en-Québec Hull Buckingham Montebello Gee… for being a bunch of _colons_, we really don’t have a whole lot of them. Quebec nomenclaturists go in more for saints, actually. Oh my, do we have a ton of those. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/31 "2006-05-23T08:59:38Z")
If I may add in an old province (Auckland) here: Well, there’s Auckland itself (and a few suburbs within) Broadwood Oakleigh Braigh Brynderwyn Dargaville Warkworth Wellsford Woodcocks Silverdale Helensville Drury Bombay Mercer Thames Huntly Hamilton Raglan Woodleigh Benneydale Gisborne Cambridge Wiltsdown That’s about all I can see on the map this time of the night, and that’s only the top half of the North Island. If folk in Wellington or the South Island piped in with this, there’d be lots more. Most of our placenames appear to be Maori, though, which is good to see. ---
**Author:** ![dbuzman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de0a6/32.png) [@dbuzman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dbuzman)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/32 "2006-05-23T09:10:26Z")
Pennsylvania has Mars. ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/33 "2006-05-23T09:25:45Z")
According to my atlas there are five towns in the USA named after the original Newark in the England. These are located in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey , New York and Ohio. There is also a Newark Lake in Nevada and a Newark Valley in New York. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Wiseguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Mr.Wiseguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Wiseguy)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/34 "2006-05-23T10:30:27Z")
Indiana has towns named Brazil, Peru, Lebanon, and Versailles (that I know of). ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/35 "2006-05-23T11:30:13Z")
[QUOTE=samclem] Ohio has most that you would expect to find in a state of our age. [/QUOTE] Near Columbus, Ohio, there is a very small village called New California. You can’t get much more foreign than that 🙂 There’s also a New Rome that used to be famous as having a police force about the same size as the population of the town. (The main industry of the town was fining drivers on US 40 for exceeding the speed limit – but the state has put an end to that nonsense now). ---
**Author:** ![FlyingRamenMonster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@FlyingRamenMonster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlyingRamenMonster)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/36 "2006-05-23T12:04:20Z")
We have a town called Denmark. ---
**Author:** ![dwc1970](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@dwc1970](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwc1970)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/37 "2006-05-23T12:16:12Z")
Idaho has a Paris. It also has an Atlanta, though that’s not really “foreign”, per se. We also have a Princeton and a Harvard, but they’re not colleges. ---
**Author:** ![Yeeter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/96bed5/32.png) [@Yeeter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeeter)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/38 "2006-05-23T17:02:08Z")
Kansas has: Dresden Florence Frankfort (close enough) Hanover Havana La Cygne (Assuming there is one France) Lebanon Moscow New Cambria Peru Toronto Zurich ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/39 "2006-05-23T17:43:52Z")
[QUOTE=panamajack] A few more from California : Newcastle [/QUOTE] Huh, that one’s new to me. And we both forgot Venice. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/40 "2006-05-23T17:45:34Z")
Michigan has a Pompeii. What is hilarious is that the locals call it “pompy-eye”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792.md?page=3)