I like how “West” occurs in the East.
EDIT (2025-02-02T05:24Z): It just occurred to me that this might’ve been because the USA generally began on the east coast [2], so those states might’ve contained the western-most cities at the time — New Jersey, which is on the easternmost side [1], contains cities with “East” in their name.
References
- “Map of USA with state and territory names 2.png”. Wikipedia. Published: 2019-09-09. Accessed: 2025-02-02T05:29Z. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Map_of_USA_with_state_and_territory_names_2.png.
- “Nouvelle-France map-en.svg”. Wikipedia. Published: 2022-12-27. Accessed: 2025-02-02T05:31Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#/media/File:Nouvelle-France_map-en.svg.
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- “Map of USA with state and territory names 2.png”. Wikipedia. Published: 2019-09-09. Accessed: 2025-02-02T05:29Z. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Map_of_USA_with_state_and_territory_names_2.png.
It’s funny that many the older states have new
Is it just me or did they apply a gradient to Maine to indicate being split between two colors, but then didn’t do the same for South Dakota or Michigan despite also being split between two categories?
Do people in New Mexico just not talk all year untill Christmas or do they just constantly all year talk about Santa?
No, then they double it. Santa Fe becomes Santa Santa Fe.
If you think that’s weird, I hear Santa Claus in Mexico is Santa Santa Claus.
Ahh I see that makes more sense lol, I’m Aussie so I have no clue what city names are in what state, had to google the US map just to find the state name.
I hope you don’t think I was serious.
Yeah nah, I reread your comment and felt like a dumbass lol, couldn’t be bothered fixing it tho, was hoping it would just disappear…
I didn’t choose this username because I thought it was funny.
This map makes zero sense. I need to see the data to understand I think. I’m unfamiliar with the apparently majority of Hawaiian cities with the name “Hawaiian” in them? In fact, there isn’t a single one to my knowledge.
And while Kansas City and Souix City or NYC all have city in the name, I’m scrolling around Georgia for instance, and there isn’t a single “______ City” in the state that I can see.
Going down Wikipedia’s list of municipalities in Georgia I see Garden City, Iron City, Junction City, Lake City, Lumber City, Mountain City, Peachtree City, Ray City, Sale City, Twin City, and Union City. Despite the “city” element, a good number of them are towns of a few hundred people and wouldn’t be easy to spot on a map
Edit: same method for Hawai’i shows Hawaiian Acres, Hawaiian Paradise Park, Hawaiian Ocean View, and Hawaiian Beaches
I guess it doesn’t take very many to make the map if there are no/few other identifiable naming conventions. Fair strategy scrolling municipalities on Wikipedia - thanks for that.
I’m sorry but you americans are so uncreative for town names. Couldn’t you have just kept whatever the natives called that land, because the american names are so boring.
Come on over to Washington where we have places like Seattle, Tacoma, Puyallup, Snohomish, Skykomish, Sammamish, Snoqualmie, and Issaquah, just to name a few.
We just have a looot of towns, so a bunch get boring names.
Indigenous names are heavily used. Half the states have Native American derived names, a much larger proportion than I thought. Pre-European population density was much lower, though so there were a lot fewer settlements to name.
I’m not American. But also, most place names are like this, they’ve just been through enough years of language changes and conquests for the obviousness to be obscured. Beijing and Tokyo are “northern capital” and “eastern capital” respectively, for example. Hawai’i either is named after the guy that discovered the big island or just means “homeland”. “Denali” means “tall”
Of course, but that was back in the days when travelling to the next village over had a different dialect, by the time you were three villages over, the language would start to shift, so there is a great diversity in names because of a diversity in language. The US everything is english (with a little spanish and native languages but not enough) so it kind of ruins it.
Hawaiian should be it’s own category/color, like Spanish. It makes more sense since there’s far more naive Hawaiian words than just “Hawaiian”.
I think it actually literally means the word “Hawaiian” rather than anything in the Hawaiian language. I found four examples of place names fitting that
looks like falls and river and hills and lodge and east and town are the most unique in that I only see one state for each. They are likely second or third in a lot of states I wager though. I bet falls is likely the most uniqur regularly used one.
…“Lodge”? 🤨 TIL
An indigenous thing I am guessing. Especially since Montana and its surroundings were one of the areas that was the last to resist European colonization. Although the mapmaker shouldn’t have listed it as ‘nature,’ unless they’re talking about a beaver lodge or something, but I’m doubtful.
You’re correct on the origins of “Lodge.” Not referring to beaver dams, Native American lodges have long been used for housing and ceremonial traditions.
I have a theory on this. Wikipedia’s list of municipalities in Montana shows three “lodge” place names: Deer Lodge, Lodge Grass, and Red Lodge. The pages for Deer Lodge and Red Lodge don’t explain their names, but the one for Lodge Grass does. It’s a mistranslation of the Crow name for the place, but it does refer to the actual grass in the area. So now the author has two with no answer found and one with a natural explanation
A bit flowery on the language, but here’s something for Deer Lodge
From this page
Through all the traditions of the Indians, the valley has been famous for the plenitude and fatness of the white-tailed deer that graze upon its ever-nutritious and almost ever-green grasses. And so the Indians, true to these facts, and weaving with them a happy fancy, named it after that which it most resembled; and we have it that the Snake hunting parties, approaching the crests of the surrounding mountains, before the pale-face came to the land, would try the fleetness of their steeds to see who would first catch sight of and hail the point of rendezvous “IT SOO-KE EN CAR-NE” “The lodge of the White-tailed deer”. The early coming French, appreciating the poetry of the designation, adopted it literally, and among them it was known as La LOGE DU CHEV-REUIL. But the laconic, matter-of-fact Yankee pioneer came this way, and without remorse boiled down all its traditions and beauty and poesy into the practical appellation “DEER LODGE,” by which name is now known the valley, the river, the county and town.
