> Quoting Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>:
>
> > Your mention of "Venice, Italy" prompts me to ask a question I
> > have been wondering about for a while. Does anyone know the
> > origin of this practice (i.e., naming the Country as well as the
> > City)? I've never heard it used on this side of the pond (UK) but
> > it seems to be standard in the US. "Paris, France" for instance,
> > sounds highly weird to me - what other Paris is there?
>
> Because wherever Anglophone settlers moved in the US, and
> in most of the rest of the former British Empire, they very
> often gave the name of their settlement the same name as one
> from their homecountry, or one they happened to admire. In Texas,
> alone, for example, there is a Paris, an Athens, a Moscow, a
> Vienna, a Dublin, a Stockholm, a Florence, a Lisbon, a Nottingham,
> a Manchester, a Stratford, an Aberdeen, a Newcastle, and an Oxford.
> Sometimes these cities become more prosperous than their etymons;
> Philadelphia, PA, and Memphis, TN, are certainly greater than
> the Egyptian cities after which they're named. Perhaps most famously
> in American geographical nomenclature, the current town of
> Bismarck, South Dakota, changed its name to its current status
> back in the 19th century in the hopes that the Iron Chancellor,
> who was then still in power, would encourage German investment
> there. (Apparently, name changes have been very, very frequent
> in Texas, and are sometimes entirely frivolous. My favorite
> story is that of Bug Tussle, Texas:
>
> <
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/BB/hnb97.html>
>
> A search at that same sight gives lots of "town name changes":
> <
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/dataware/cgi-bin/web_evaluate?dataset=
> TSHA&dbs=TSHA&shs_action=&multi=1&num_docs=50&query=town+name+change
> &searchButton=Search>)
>
> It's funny that you should mention this. During the dead time
> when the list wasn't sending out posts, I had time to waste so
> I was browsing through the online records of debates in the new
> Scottish Parliament. One was discussing one of the latest
> American holidays, Tartan Day, on which Americans of Scottish
> descent (like myself) celebrate their Scottish heritage. Naturally,
> a great deal of self-congratulation and navel-gazing ensued. (It
> was almost surreal to hear one member of the SNP speak so approvingly
> of Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich for getting that bill passed,
> considering how antithetical the Republicans and the SNP are on
> most issues.) It apparently came as quite a shock to them all
> when one Parliamentarian mentioned that there are no less than
> eight (8) Aberdeens in the United States alone.
>
> What with so many small towns named after great towns, it's not
> surprising that people would feel the need to differentiate.
>
> =====================================================================
> Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <
http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier>
>
> "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
> Dept. of Linguistics mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
> University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
> 1010 E. 59th Street and not complete one road that has no turn"
> Chicago, IL 60637 Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers