Fun Facts: Place Names #2
"I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. "
—Abraham Lincoln
The word "uptown" was in use before the word "downtown" was.
Both words were originally used to describe parts of Manhattan.
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The modern country of Ghana is not the same as ancient Ghana. Today's
Ghana was formerly known as the Gold Coast, on the Gulf of Guinea in West
Africa. Ancient Ghana, which lasted until around 1240, occupied parts of what are now Mali and Mauritania,
between the Senegal and Niger rivers. The word "ghana" was a title meaning
"war chief", and the area got its name from Africans from the north who
would trade with "ghana".
Over 1,500 years after they occupied parts of Spain, the Vandals,
a Germanic tribe, are still present in name: the region in the south
known as Andalusia is merely "Vandalusia" with the initial letter
missing.
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On January 19th, 2000, Halfway, Oregon accepted an offer from
the website Half.com to rename itself to Half.com, Oregon in exchange for
$100,000.
Levan, Utah, is "navel" spelled backwards. It received this name
because it is located in the centre of Utah.
There are several Christmas-related unusual place names in the
United States of America. They include Christmas, Florida,
North Pole, Alaska, Santa Claus, Indiana, Santa Claus, Georgia, Noel,
Missouri, and Snowflake, Arizona.
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Los Angeles can be abbreviated to a two-letter-long abbreviation, "L.A."
However, the city's original name was quite long. It was
"El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina
de los Angeles de Porciuncula", which means "The Village of Our Lady the Queen
of the Angels of 'Little Portion'" in Spanish.
(source)
There are places in Texas named Chocolate Bayou, Cut and Shoot, Ding Dong, Earth, Egypt, Gun Barrel City, Happy, Lollipop,
Nameless, Noodle, and Tarzan.
(source)
Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, means "mud-yellow estuary".
Pakistan was named by the British by taking the initials of Punjab,
Afghanistan, and Kashmir, and added the ending "istan", meaning "land
of", creating the Asian-sounding name.
Chicago, Illinois, in the United States, was once known as Fort Dearborn,
Indian Territory.
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There are 66 cities in the United States named Fairview.
(source)
Among the unusual place names in the U.S. state of Florida are places
called Two Egg and Acres of Diamonds.
(source)
The place-name Washington, which honours George Washington, can be found
as the name of a state, the only state named after an American, the capital
of the United States, 29 counties, and 33 towns.
(source)
There used to be a place called "6" in West Virginia.
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New England was originally on the west coast of North America, not the east.
When Francis Drake claimed that area for Queen Elizabeth I, he named the area
Novus Albion (New England) because he thought the white cliffs near
Point Reyes resembled the chalk cliffs near Dover.
(source)
The name of Switzerland used on Swiss stamps is not in any of Switzerland's
four official languages (German, French, Italian, or Romansch), but in Latin
(Helvetia).
The shortest place names in the world are only a single letter long.
There is a village of Y (population 143) in France,
which has been so named since 1241, and villages called Å located
in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
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The Cambridge River (in England) is the current spelling of a name that
has been previously spelled in three different ways.
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