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The ditto towns of New England
By adamg on Fri, 01/19/2018 - 12:53pm
Garrett Dash Nelson has created a map showing how many of our England-derived town names are duplicated across New England.
New England is a beautiful place, but its place-names aren’t the most lyrical, with an awful lot of toponymic stealing from Old England. What’s more, New England place-names aren’t even uniquely plagiarized: 655 towns and cities in New England have a counterpart with the same name elsewhere in the six-state area.
H/t Ari Ofsevit.
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Comments
Named after people
How towns with English sounding names are named after people, and not after towns in England.
Warren comes to mind, but I think there are a few more.
Amherst MA is named after Jeffery Amherst, but does he get his name from the location in England? Sort of a chicken and egg problem.
EDIT: There are many places named Warren. And even places that were founded before General Warren was born, are name after him such as Warren NJ
Then there's Lincoln
Which sounds like it was named after you know who, but was named for the place in England.
My genealogy
According to my librarian Aunt who is very big into genealogy, the first of my family to come to America came from Malden, England to Malden, MA. When said Aunt was in England to continue her research (Uncle was on sabbatical which included travel as part of both of their research), her first visit to Malden, England elicited no information. After a couple of days, she learned that there apparently TWO Malden, Englands. That changed their travel agenda.
This map is cool
but missing Braintree VT / Braintree MA
One and only
All I know is that there is only one Roslindale!
Except for the town it was named after
Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland
Braintree? One of the oldest
Braintree? One of the oldest towns in Massachusetts.
Franklin MA is missing
Per the map, there are four Franklins (CT, NH, ME, and VT), but it omitted Franklin, MA. Are there any other towns missing?
Where is Franklin England?
The keys for inclusion are multi state presence and English roots.
There isn't a Franklin in England
The map includes four Franklins in New England, but left out a fifth, the one in Massachusetts. That's beside the point: English roots were not a key for inclusion here. Many New England towns listed on this map do not have English root names, including Canaan, Lebanon, Lisbon, Scituate, Bethel, Berlin, Hebron, Peru, Troy, Calais, Plainville, and Union among others.
Ah, light dawns on Marblehead
I just read Adam's description without visiting the website. Sure enough, towns with non-English based names are there, right down to the very native, differently pronounced Scituate.