Reading about the life of William Penn, I find it really cool to have an entire colony/state named after yourself. Are there other notable examples? What’s the most populous city, state, province, country which bears the name of an individual person?
The geographic entity has to contain the actual name of the person, so Virginia (Elizabeth I) or New York (Duke of York, James II) don’t count.
(I almost forgot: America - the continent - doesn’t count either 
)
The Philippines has a population of 98 million and is named after king Philip II of Spain.
China is named for Emperor Chin. Does that count?
Califia… are you counting fictional people?
There’s Europe, named after a mythical person.
Only historical people, so Hercules, CA doesn’t count.
Isn’t America named after Amerigo Vespucci?
Bolivia - Simon Bolivar.
If Virginia and America don’t count, then how come Pennsylvania does? I don’t understand the rules.
(My suggestion was going to be the Holy Roman Empire, after Romulus. )
Oh, now I get it - Virginia’s actual name was Elizabeth. Still, what’s wrong with America? You have a problem with translations?
Hmmm… How does the continent’s name appear in other languages? Do ANY call it “Amerigo”?
I believe he also used the Latinized name “Americus” which wad a common affectation of the educated in those days. The continent being a land, was the feminized version ending in -a.
I think the Phillipines is probably the winner for any kind of geographic entity.
Just cruising down the list of most populous cities, there’s maybe some grey area on the whole “mythological” thing with Sao Paulo. Otherwise it would appear that Ho Chi Minh City is the current winner of cities named after people who definitely existed. The Turks completely lost their chance to claim that title by renaming Constantinople, but I guess that’s their business.
Why? We have letters from Paul, whether or not you believe he was a saint.
That’s not even the most populous place named for Bolivar. Bolivia has about 10 million people. Venezuela (officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) is just a smidge under 29 mil.
(Population figures from Wikipedia.)
In a similar vein India has two official names - India, and, after an Indian emperor - Bharat.
I think that would fall under the same exclusion as New York, in that Chin/Qin was a landed title, not a family name.
Well, admittedly I’m not totally up on biblical historicity, but my impression is that there’s evidence he existed, but no particular evidence that he resembled the character in the gospels. I’d call him sort of semi-mythical. But YMMV.
In other words, Paul was certainly a historical figure, but São Paolo was named after the mythical figure inspired by the historical figure. The Philippines were named the historical figure, directly, and only indirectly for Saint Philip (in that that’s ultimately where King Philip got his name.)
I don’t think Bharat / Bharata counts, because the eponymous king is either legendary or mythical, depending on whether it’s an epithet of Agni or just some guy in the Rg Vega.
His name was Zhao Zheng. Qin Shi Huang (or Ch’in Shih Huang) was a title that meant First Emperor of China.
AFAIK, the generally/popularly understood idea is that it is the Bharat referred to in the Mahabharata, which still makes it legendary/mythical, just not either of the options you’ve listed. Your objection stands. (I thought he was historical, in my defence)
I think the Shi Huang part is the “first emperor” bit, with Qin being the title he held by virtue of being in charge of the state of Qin. But, hey, he sometimes posts here so maybe we can ask him.
You may be thinking of Jesus: this is what some people say about Jesus. Paul, on the other hand, is not a character in the gospels at all. He does appear in the book of Acts, and perhaps more importantly, the New Testament includes a number of letters written by Paul. (Some of these letters are disputed by Biblical scholars, but as far as I know there’s no one who seriously claims that Paul never existed or that he never wrote at least some of the letters attributed to him.)
I’m still not sure why (North/South/Central) America shouldn’t count, but if it did, it’d be hard to beat.