this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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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.
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.
NJ has a lot: Lopatacong, Paramus, Manahawkin, Absecon, Piscataway, Manalapan, Cinnaminson, Hackensack, Parsippany, Teaneck, Manasquan, Raritan - just to name a few!
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.
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.