# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/41 "2006-05-23T18:01:19Z")
Alexandria Athens Bolivar Brighton Bristol Camden Carthage Columbia Dover Erin Gallaway (sp, but still) Germantown Hohenwald Lebanon Loudon Memphis Milan Moscow Normandy Paris Smyrna South Carthage Sparta Winchester We also have a tiny community named [Three Way, Tennessee](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Way%2C_Tennessee), which isn’t **nearly** as interesting as it sounds… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/42 "2006-05-23T18:33:52Z")
Nope. It outside of Spokane. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/43 "2006-05-23T18:37:20Z")
[QUOTE=Push You Down] Nope. It outside of Spokane. [/QUOTE] What be outside of Spokane? Mongo no unnerstan. ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/44 "2006-05-23T18:37:41Z")
Ahhh sunuva gun That was in response to the question about Tokio Washington. ---
**Author:** ![JohnM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@JohnM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnM)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/45 "2006-05-23T20:41:54Z")
This is just from a quick ten minute perusal of townships, cities and counties in Pennsylvania that have websites, so there are bound to be many more: Bethlehem Cambria Chester Cumberland Dublin Edinboro Ephrata Hanover King of Prussia (okay, named for a foreign person, but still) Lebanon London Grove New Britain New Kensington New London Northampton Palmyra Philadelphia Plymouth Reading Somerset Upper Dublin Upper Southampton York ---
**Author:** ![NicePete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee7513/32.png) [@NicePete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NicePete)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/46 "2006-05-23T21:10:19Z")
[QUOTE=beebee] there is a bagdad, arizona. [/QUOTE] I live in Bagdad, Kentucky. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/47 "2006-05-23T21:14:44Z")
[QUOTE=Rayne Man] 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. [/QUOTE] People who live in Newark, Ohio pronounce their town’s name as “Nerk.” I wish I was kidding. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Hung\_Mung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@Hung\_Mung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hung_Mung)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/48 "2006-05-23T21:45:02Z")
[QUOTE=BdCoT] Alexandria Athens Bolivar Brighton Bristol Camden Carthage Columbia Dover Erin Gallaway (sp, but still) Germantown Hohenwald Lebanon Loudon Memphis Milan Moscow Normandy Paris Smyrna South Carthage Sparta Winchester [/QUOTE] A few more: Alexandria Antioch Belfast Bogota Brunswick Cordova Denmark Dresden Eaton Lancaster Manchester Petersburg Quebeck (not spelled right, but this is the South) Rugby Sardis ---
**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, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/49 "2006-05-23T23:23:07Z")
[QUOTE=Biffy the Elephant Shrew] Huh, that one’s new to me. And we both forgot Venice. [/QUOTE] Newcastle’s up off Highway 80 past Sacramento. And not just Venice, but Manhattan (both with ‘Beach’). There’s also a Newark, CA (which I should have remembered), though upon checking, it’s named after Newark Castle in Scotland. **swampbear** , does the pronunciation of the local Vienna differ from that of the Austrian one? Seems the same from what you wrote. ---
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/50 "2006-05-23T23:34:36Z")
Kentucky also has Paris, Versailles, Glasgow and Winchester. Probably some others I can’t recall right now. ---
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/51 "2006-05-23T23:40:09Z")
Oops, I forgot Lebanon, Brandenburg, Manchester, and London. ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/52 "2006-05-24T00:14:01Z")
[QUOTE=UncleRojelio] Paris is in Texas. [/QUOTE] And Texas is in Queensland, Australia. As for my own home state of New **South Wales** (which is actually the new “South Wales”, not the new and south “Wales”), there are too many British placenames to even list. It would be a good percentage of them. Some of the ones that seem obvious, however, aren’t named after British places. The Sydney suburb of Liverpool, for example, is named after a person. The early settlers were big on themes, so the coal and steel city of Newcastle is surrounded by placenames that also surround Newcastle, England, such as “Wallsend”. After you travel west under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the wide harbour narrows to become the Parramatta River, the suburbs on either side are often named after places on the Thames. There’s a Canada Bay too. Not much outside of British influence here though. I used to live in the Sydney suburb of Riverwood (formerly the very British “Herne Bay”), and there was an American military hospital there during WWII. There’s a big housing estate there now, and all the streets are named after US states and presidents. There’s a Bagdad in Tasmania, and a Denmark in Western Australia. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/53 "2006-05-24T01:11:21Z")
Fer American Dopers, if you are not one of the Originals, yanno, Native American, all the names are furren. Menominee, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![RetroVertigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b38774/32.png) [@RetroVertigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RetroVertigo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/54 "2006-05-24T05:48:21Z")
**Missouri** Mexico Cuba Columbia Just a few off the top of my head ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/55 "2006-05-24T06:10:50Z")
[QUOTE=Winston Smith] My first thought was that Britons would have a hard time naming places named for foreign cities. 🙂 [/QUOTE] Well, there’s a part of my local town, built in the 1900s, named California. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/56 "2006-05-24T06:12:42Z")
[Link](http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=617500&Y=244500&A=Y&Z=3) ---
**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 24, 2006, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/57 "2006-05-24T06:25:26Z")
There is also California Sands near Great Yarmouth, on the Suffolk / Norfolk border. There is a Dunkirk in Kent, and according to what I can find, it is probably named after the town in France :- - In the early 18th century there was a house on the Dunkirk/Boughton-under-Blean border called Dunkirk - and this gave its name to the area. And how did the house get its name? Perhaps between 1658 and 1662, when the French Dunkirk was an English possession, the owner had traded there successfully and named his house in Kent in remembrance of this. Dunkirk is in the part of France where Flemish, not French, was spoken, and the name means ‘the church on the dunes’. \* ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/58 "2006-05-24T12:05:31Z")
When I worked in Memphis we had a good-hearted but not, er, highly, er, exposed to the world outside the trailer park lady, who did some office work with us. As the highlight of her life she got to go on vacation in Alaska. On her return she was euphoric with the experience (and God bless her to it), particularly the mountains, water, and so on. After she ran down she looked puzzled and added, “But there sure are a lot of towns in Alaska named after towns in Tennessee.” I suggested mildly that maybe both of them were named after towns in other places. She looked even more puzzled. Like wut? I offered Milan, Tennessee. She maxed out on puzzlement. “What’s Milan named after?” ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/59 "2006-05-24T15:31:25Z")
Here in Panama there’s a small town called Paris, but it’s named after an Indian chief, not the city in France. There are very few places here named after other cities. (There may be a few, but I can’t think of any off hand.) There are a few places with the same names as other cities - San Francisco, Santiago - but it’s just because they were coincidentally named after the same saint. ---
**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 24, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792/60 "2006-05-24T22:01:47Z")
[QUOTE=TheLoadedDog] The early settlers were big on themes, so the coal and steel city of Newcastle is surrounded by placenames that also surround Newcastle, England, such as “Wallsend”. [/QUOTE] There are also quite a few place names from south Wales (the old south Wales) around Newcastle, such as Cardiff, Swansea and Aberdare – so some of the coal miners came from Wales to New South Wales. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/towns-in-your-state-named-after-foreign-places/357792.md?page=4)