Well, my first guess is London, UK, and London, Ontario (some 366K). I then thought of St. Petersburg, but it’s only about 250K for the Florida locale.
Wuh? They are? I did not know that.
The NJ one is pronounced something like “New-erk” while the Delaware one is more like “New-Ark”.
OK, found one better:
Anyang, China (5M+) and Anyang, South Korea (with 617K). But Anyang is what appears to be a “prefecture-level city” which–someone help me out here–appears to be more of something like a county area. That said, it appears what would be normally classified as the city part is around 2M, so it looks like 617K is the number to beat now.
As of 2010:
Pasadena, Texas: 149,000
Padsadena, California: 137,000
ratio: 1.09
ETA: I didn’t see Old Guy’s post on Springfields in MA and MO, which has this beat.
How about Paris, AR 3,495
Paris FR, 2,244,000 ?
China has two cities named Fuzhou. The smaller one has over 2 million people.
Among large cities, I found a few others within 20%:
[ul]
[li]Glendale, AZ & Glendale, CA: 232,143/194,478 ≈ 1.194[/li][li]Columbia, SC & Columbia, MO: 131,686/113,225 ≈ 1.163[/li][li]Pasadena, CA & Pasadena, TX: 152,272/138,547 ≈ 1.099.[/li][/ul]Neither of these are better than Springfield, MO/MA (which are within 5.6% of each other if you use the populations of the cities proper rather than their metro areas.) If you’re willing to go a bit smaller, there’s also Springfield, OH (59,956) and Springfield, OR (60,263), whose populations are within about 0.5% of each other.
Mexico, North America, Earth: 122 million.
Mexico, Maine: 2,681
Peru, South America, Earth: 30 million
Peru, Maine: 1,541
I do have fun telling people my MIL was born in Mexico. No, not that one.
What about Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS? Or is that cheating?
Don’t forget China, Maine.
violates condition 3 of original question – not OP but the later question.
And then there’s Africa (the continent) and Africa, Ohio (population about 10 or 20). I’ve been to both.
Even better:
Earth, third planet in the solar system: 7 billion
Earth, Texas: 1,065
Toronto, Ontario: population 2 615 060 (in 2011).
Toronto, Indiana: population 0. It is described as ‘extinct’ in the linked Wikipedia article.
There’s also Mexico, Missouri - Wikipedia. It’s bigger than the one in Maine. And very few of those Mexicans are Latinos.
How about co-named cities where the larger, more famous one was founded later?
Vancouver, WA (founded 1857) pop 161,791
Vancouver, BC (founded 1867, renamed that in 1886) pop 603,502
China has 14 cities of over 5 million people (Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Taipei, Chengdu, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Wuhan, Shenyang, Hangzhou, and Chongqing). Listed by Wikipedia the “built-up” area of 93 have over 1 million. But only one on that list was named Fuzhou.
Let’s go for quantity, if not quality:
Long Beach, CA - 462,257 pop., 51.437 sq mi
Long Beach, WA
Long Beach, MI
Long Beach, Connecticut, a beach
Long Beach, Indiana
Long Beach, Maryland (a census-designated place)
Long Beach, Minnesota
Long Beach, Mississippi
Long Beach, New York
Long Beach, North Carolina
… and a couple of places in Canada, and a suburb in Australia, and a town in New Zealand.