The Global Roots of U.S. City Names
Just like your favorite movie, if you really, really love your hometown, you may have mixed feelings about it getting a “sequel.” But that’s what happened across early America: Europeans colonized the land and named their settlements after the distant towns from whence they came.
Centuries on, while China builds brick-for-brick ‘re-makes’ of iconic international cities, America’s sequel towns have grown into very different places from the towns that inspired them. Still, it’s possible to get a flavor of the originals — whether European or otherwise — without leaving the States: the tulip festival in Holland, Michigan, or the ‘wild’ Swedish Dala horses of Lindsborg, Kansas, for example.
Inspired by this project by the team at Axios, data analysts at Word Finder X identified the most common countries of origin of American place names.
