One name, two places

[minoanmiss]

Georgia / Georgia
Europe / Europa

I can't think of any others. Can you?

Comments

[bikergeek]

Washington D.C./Washington State

[minoanmiss]

You're totally right. Plus Cincinnati* and a bunch of other places.

[bikergeek]

Many places in the US and Canada were named in homage to places in the Old World by settlers who named the places they settled after familiar places where they came from.

In parts of the world where Catholicism is or was the majority religion, there are a lot of cities and towns named for saints, and that causes quite a lot of overlap.

[med_cat]

True, within driving distance from us are Odessa, Berlin, Florence, and St. Petersburg...

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

I suppose New York would be the trifecta. It's the name of a city, of one of the counties in that city (there are five counties in that city), and of the state that both are in.

Ann O.

[minoanmiss]

That's kind of niftily recursive.

[squirrelitude]

For that matter, there's Earth, TX (which is on Earth.)

[tibicina]

So many Springfields.

There are also several Pasadenas. Basically, town names get repeated a lot.

And there are technically three Californias. (The U.S. one, Baja California del Norte and Baja California del Sur. Though they're all kind of together in a line.)

There's also Vancouver, WA and Vancouver, BC.

[minoanmiss]

This is why I'm glad I asked -- I didn't realize those were different Vancouvers!

Hmm. The Californias both do and don't count, since they are all parts of a greater california. But I mostly asked this question to learn things, so we'll count them since I have learned more about the California Conglomeration. :D

[potofsoup]

Portland, OR and Portland, ME
Plus, stuff like Cairo, IL

Are you looking for things where there's a size difference, too? (As in, one is a state and the other is a country?)

[minoanmiss]

That's a good question. I'm not sure. I mean, it amuses me to compare a continent and a moon, but a state vs a country and a state vs a city both seem more prosaic.

[conuly]

Paris, TX / Paris, France (but then, a lot of cities in the US and Canada are named after cities in Europe, and it's almost cheating.)

[watersword]

There's also a Paris, Idaho!

New England and upstate New York have ....a lot. Athens, Ithaca, Rome, Syracuse, are all cities/towns in New York, and I know I'm missing some. There's a Versailles, Connecticut; Calais, Vermont; Calais, Maine; and Maine itself may have been named for the French province Maine.

[minoanmiss]

Ahahah, how could I have forgotten! I'm from NY and live in MA now!

[hitchhiker]

lots if you stick to cities - e.g. there's a london in ontario, a paris in texas, and a brisbane here in the bay area. but i can't think of many other examples of different types of entity having the same name either.

[nagi_schwarz]

Preston, Idaho/Preston, England
Moscow, Idaho/Moscow, Russia
Manila, Utah/Manila, Philippines
Syracuse, Utah/Syracuse, New York
New Mexico/Mexico, I guess
Venice Beach and Venice?

[stranger]

I wonder if this could be refined to pairs of places where one wasn't named directly after the other (so the towns of Paris, London, Berlin, Bethlehem, etc., in the U.S. would have a different category). Many of them are still named both or all after a common source, like the two Washingtons or the myriad Alexandrias in the Middle East where Alexander the Great founded cities named after himself. I don't know where all the Springfields came from. Was the Springfield rifle *that* famous? (Probably, I guess.)

[sabotabby]

Nearly everywhere here is named after somewhere in the UK.

[minoanmiss]

True, true. I'm enjoying the examples people are giving me, especially the compare and contrast. :)

[cmcmck]

Wellington, Shropshire (where we live) UK

Welington,Somerset, UK

Wellington NZ

[dira]

There's a medium-ish-for-the-midwest city in Ontario called London, so that requires some specifying sometimes. :D

Also there are a surprising number of cities named Milwaukee and Milford, which I know because of getting phone calls at work for public libraries in entirely other states.

[minoanmiss]

I didn't know there were multiple Milwaukees!

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

There are at least four other Milfords in the U.S., in addition to the one I live in here in Massachusetts. But then, back in the day, it shouldn't be surprising that there was a place to ford a river where there was also a mill.

Ann O.

[lb_lee]

Irrelevant, but we got the postcards! (And man, they got SAVAGED through the mail; the envelope was barely holding together, though the cards themselves were fine!) Thank you so much!

[minoanmiss]

Augh, I am so sorry the envelope got battered like that! makes a note You are most welcome :)

Main(e)ly Recursive

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

Look up a map of Maine. It has many, many places that are named after other places, including countries.

Ann O.

[kaebe]

There are A LOT if duplicate names in Texas. I remember that much.

There's multiple Arlingtons - one in Texas, one in MA, and I'm sure in a bunch of other places.

There's Cambridge, MA, and Cambridge in England, and probably others.

Portland ME and OR is the one that gets me the most! I get confused all the time which one people are talking about.

[minoanmiss]

Cambridge and Camrbidge! I really should have remembered that one.

[tjs_whatnot]

One I've noticed having lived in many coastal states is that they all have a Newport. What's weird about Washington's is that it isn't on the coast, it's over by Idaho.

♥

Funny about Georgia. When I started working for a new family a few years ago, the mom had to go on a work trip to Georgia and I didn't realize until she got back that it was the country of Georgia and not the state. :D

[brooksmoses]

Virginia's Newport is likewise out in the inland end of the state, near West Virginia, nowhere near the coast -- and, for that matter, nowhere near a navigable river either. For added confusion, that Newport is just a tiny little town (which happens to be where I grew up), and there is a city called Newport News on the coast.

[gingicat]

There is a Medford OR, which is why I let Google know my location when looking up the school and library websites. :p

[minoanmiss]

Oh, that's right -- I used to have a penpal who lived there.

[vettecat]

There are lots of town names that repeat within the different states in New England, and probably beyond that as well.

[redbird]

How about Mars, California, and Jupiter, Florida?

The Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo, and North and South Korea.

[minoanmiss]

I did not know about the planetary towns. :D