US Namesake Towns That Didn’t Quite Live Up to Their Illustrious Predecessors

There sure are a lotta “inhabited places” in the ol’ US of A. So, what to call ‘em all?

Well, there’s all sorts of possibilities: original Indian names (Chicago, Omaha, Miami), descriptives (Las Vegas, Long Beach, Salt Lake City), famous people (Washington, St Louis, Raleigh) …

Another possibility is to call them after other places. A lot of these are simply after cities or towns where the original settlers came from – Boston, Hartford, Newark …

Some of these, though, are a little more aspirational. Memphis, Syracuse, Troy & Athens, for example, are all named after famous places from the ancient past. 

Egypt or Tennessee?

Unfortunately, things don’t also turn out as the town fathers had hoped. Imagine, for example, calling yourself Rome, then having a population of 17. Or, how about an Athens in the middle of the flatlands of Kansas?

Methodology

1. Identify the most famous cities around the world
2. Find the smallest similarly-named town I can in the US
3. Compare them in a table

London

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
UK	9M	43	Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Bucking-ham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, British Museum, Wimbledon	Chaucer, Elizabeth I, Victoria, Dickens, William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, David Beckham, Alfred Hitchcock	Capital
Indiana	65	1852			Site of mid-air collision that killed 78 people

 

Paris

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
France	2.1M	250 BC	Eifel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Champs-Elysees, Pere Lachaise, Louvre, Sorbonne	Joan of Arc, Louis XIV, Napoleon, DeGaulle, Voltaire, Des-cartes, Sartre, Pasteur, Marie Curie, Debussy	Capital, City of Light
Virginia	44	1810	Ashby Inn & Restaurant, Lavender Green Florist

 

Rome

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Italy	2.7M	753 BC	Forum, Coliseum, Pantheon, Vatican, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps	Augustus, Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, Raphael, Fellini, Maria Montessori	Capital, Eternal City
Ohio	83	1835	Methodist church, post office	Melissa Jones, mayor	Also known as “Stout”

 

Athens

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Greece	3.6M	3000 NC	Acropolis, Parthenon, Agora, Lyceum, Temple of Zeus	Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides	Capital, cradle of Western civilization, birthplace of democracy
Kansas	62	1872		Fred Beckler, E.D. Plumb, Richard Albertson, Robert White, John McAffee (1st settlers); Thomas B. Johns, Robert Day, Jacob Gilmore, A.S. Hoag (1st town officers)	“The people are moral, intelligent, industrious and prosperous, and the society is unsurpassed.” [ksgenweb.org]

 

Florence

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Italy	362K	9th Cent. BC	Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, Uffizi, David, Bargello, Boboli Gardens, Santa Croce, Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio	Medicis, Dante, Machiavelli, Boccaccio, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Galileo	Cradle of the Renaissance
Illinois	17		Bridge across Illinois River		2nd-least populated municipality in Illinois

Cairo

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Egypt	10.3M	300	Pyramids, Sphinx, Memphis, Heliopolis, National Museum	Amenhotep, Tutankhamun, Nasser, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, Omar Sharif	Capital
West Virginia	174	1895	Town hall (on National Register of Historic Places), North Bend Rail Trail, Cairo Suspension Foot Bridge		“A hidden gem known for its natural beauty, historic sites, and outdoor activities” [onlyinyourstate. com]

 


Berlin

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Germany	3.9M	1200s	Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Berlin Wall Memorial, Charlottenburg Palace, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church	Frederick the Great, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Red Baron (Manfred von Richtofen), Gropius, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Witt	Capital
North Dakota	31	1887	Grain elevators	Milton Young, US senator

 

Moscow

Location	Pop	Founded	Sites	Notable People	Notes
Russia	13.1M	Neolithic period	Kremlin, Red Square, St Basil’s Cathedral, Metro stations, GUM department store, Gorky Park, Bolshoi Theatre	Peter the Great, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Wasilly Kandinsky, Alexander Scriabin, Boris Pasternak, Sergey Brin	Capital, the Third Rome
Arkansas	8	Pre Civil War	Methodist Church & Cemetery (Arkansas Register of Historic Places)		Site of Civil War battle, the Action at Moscow