I live in New England, USA. I was talking with a Brit about the British show The Archers. The Brit asked me whether I could tell which places were made up for the show and which were real. I told him that if I new a place in New England named something, it was probably a real place in the UK.
They were still Europeans when they did the naming
Not necessarily. The majority of current US was colonised long after it became an independent state.
New Zealand did it with a whole ass country
The city of York used to be called Amsterdam before, right?
Sometimes they don’t even put new in front of it. Illinois has a Milan, but they pronounce it My-lan. Smh
Bagdad, Arizona
No I did not misspell that.
There's a Bagdad in Tasmania too, went past it when I was down there a while back (as well as Jericho and the Nile River).
Supposedly that city is named after a dad who ran a mining operation loading stuff out in bags. Ridiculous.
There's also a Bagdad in Florida.
I've heard that but I highly doubt it. seems like a post 9/11 freedom fries kinda deal. When I was a kid I remember hearing that they named it that way because the founder had been to Baghdad and thought it the most beautiful desert city in the world, so he wanted to invoke that spirit. Doubt the spelling was nearly as standardized back then.
The third one in this series is my favorite