Renaming America?

It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. Why is so much of America named after foreign countries?

Our exhaustive search of American place names discovered that one country has been a shockingly dominant source of inspiration. You’ll never guess which one.

It has come to our attention that much of the United States of America is, shockingly, named for countries that are not the United States of America.
It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. Or New Mexico. Or the Old Mexico Mine in Colorado. Or the Mexico Public Library in Maine. Our analysis has revealed thousands of places — and even more people — named after well over 100 foreign countries.

In many places, such as rural Clear Creek County in the Colorado Rockies, you can circumnavigate the globe without straying beyond county limits just by hopping from the Belgian Hare Mine to the Brazil Shaft Mine via the Lebanon Tunnel or the Mexican Gulch:


Source: https://wapo.st/4i7x7h3 Gift article. (No paywall)

Paris Tx is quite famous, I believe: Paris, Texas (1984) - IMDb

PS> It will take a while to find new “American names” for all these places.

:rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:

In PL we have 53 places with America(Ameryka) in the name .

One of them in the link:
[Ameryka, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship - Wikipedia].(Ameryka, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship - Wikipedia)

Meantime the list of polish geographical names in the US is here:
List of place names of Polish origin in the United States - Wikipedia

@ombugge You never give up !!! Do You ?? :winking_face_with_tongue:

Norway, Denmark and Sweden are in the state of South Carolina

Lots of places with Norwegian names in North America.
Filatelist Hallvard Slettebø have studied especially US Post Offices, past and present, with Norwegian affiliated names: Norway in America - Alabama

Maybe some Norwegian descended members of this forum would be interested in finding out if their family name appear on a post office somewhere?
Here are Norwegian P.O. names listed state by state:

PS> There are still some Norwegian-Americans who speak a form of Norwegian that is now regarded as a separate dialect,called American-Norwegian:

Also in Maine.

2 Likes

Has Paris but not Moscow.

1 Like

Or Calais. Another, somewhere in Ireland:

1 Like

Although there’s St Petersburg in Florida…

1 Like

But Maine has Moscow. Was home to the Air Force over-the-horizon radar station transmitter in the '90s.

1 Like

Here’s a song about a little town down around San Antone. The writer of the song discovered it actually existed. He claimed he didn’t know, he just picked the words out of his head when writing & a taxicab driver told him about the place 10 years later. I’ve been there. It’s a pretty cool little town if you like those old, flat sage brush towns.

It’s odd that the Wikipedia article mentions that abandoned Air Force site but not Wyman Dam.

As does Idaho … and 19 other towns.

1 Like

I knew about the OTH radar because of my interest in radio. Our use of such was substantially more considerate than the infamous Soviet “Woodpecker” which went blasting through great swathes of the HF bands with complete disregard of other users, to the extent that fancy receivers of the '80s had specially tailored Woodpecker filters that could be engaged to take some of the curse out of it.

2 Likes

Most place name in North America probably have a British origin.
Likewise, the majority of white American who care to trace their ancestry probably find some British DNA in their lineage.

Source: British Americans - Wikipedia.

The distribution of those identifying as English-Americans:


Source: https://qr.ae/pY3Ri1

That’s because a great many got free boat rides or reduced price tickets for the cruise to the ‘new world’. Effectively deported.They weren’t necessarily the best and brightest either but they made it work out for the most part. They were the Central Americans and Middle Easterners of their day. Look at how Australia got populated for another example of creative population control the British practiced.

1 Like

Others are doing their bit:


Source: Redirecting...

2 Likes