Why did america name it's places after UK places?

Question

the citys and towns in the USA have been named after UK towns and citys, why is this? I can name loads

US UK


New york - York is a small town in England that is a' tourist town' has loads of old houses in

Cardiff by the sea - Cardiff is the captal of wales UK

Washington - Washington is a small town in the north of england

Newcastle - newcastle is a ciry in the north of england

New Hampshire - Hampshire is a county in the UK

Manchester - north city in the uk

why did the US do this? its really anoying they should of came up with thier own names

Additional Details

that could explain it lol I was doing my work on cardiff UK and cardiff US came up i have to do my work again cos i worte about the wrong place GRRRR lol

ohh theys a pissed of yankee at the end of the page lol

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Coz they were too busy designing the worlds biggest burger to think about place names!!

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

that made my laugh :D

Answer 2

Because the people that founded those towns were from England. When they were founded the US was still a colony of England.

Answer 3

The US used to belong to the British.

Answer 4

i was wonderin that too lol.
not forgettin blackpool norwich and norfolk xD

i think it might be coz us is such a big place that they ran out of names to call places so they used other ones.
and what the guys above me said lol

Source(s):

me, myself and I

Answer 5

So?

Actually, one could argue that all the cities named Washington, and Washington State, are named after George Washington. The family likely took their name from the place, but they're not alone in that regard.

Venice, Florida, is named after the city in Italy.

Cupertino, California, whose name has a wonderful alliterative quality, is named after another town in Italy called Copertino.

Many cities and counties on the East Coast have Indian names.

A number of cities in California and the Southwest have Spanish names.

Several states, including Illinois, Massachusetts, and Virgnia, have towns named Springfield--nobody gets upset that they're "copying" each other, and I don't think anyone in those towns cares that the Simpsons creator named the town in which they live Springfield. And I don't think anyone besides you would care that there's a Portland, Maine, and a Portland, Oregon.

I care that you don't know the difference between a possessive and a contraction, that you don't seem to know the rules of capitalization and punctuation, and that you didn't use spell check.

And it's "should have", not "should of".

Answer 6

Have you for gotten WHO settled those towns? They were British people who came to " the colonies" to live. Those first settlers had no intention of starting a new country...they were British, not "Americans." There was no such country as the" United States of America" at that time. These people simply named their new settlements after there hometowns back in Britain. In some places, King George gave large pieces of land to loyalists and British military officers...who then named those areas after members of the royal family or places in England. The French and Spanish did the same thing. And...Washington was named after George Washington, not after the town in England. After the Revolution, when , the U.S. of America became independent from England, the practice of naming towns after towns in the "mother country" stopped. Haven't you wondered the same thing about Canada or other commonwealth countries or former British colonies all over the world?

Answer 7

The answer is that very often the first colonists wanted to name where they settled after their original home town or county. I think in the case of Washington those cities in the US are named after the first president rather than Washington Tyne and Wear.

It was also common to name places after the royal family too. Hence Georgetown for King George, Charlotte for the queen of that name and loads of others.

It was not just the Brits who did this in the USA and elsewhere. There are German and Dutch names and one or two Scandinavian ones too. A lot were named after the native american names too.

Of course the first settlement of Manhattan island (native american name) was named by the Dutch as New Amsterdam and only became New York after the island, considered worthless by the Dutch government of the day was ceded to the British in a treaty in exchange for their territories in the Banda Islands, the home of Nutmeg. A bit of the Dutch influence lives on of course in the district of Harlem, named for a town in Holland.

The process of naming places for yourself or for where you came from started I think with the Macedonian conqueror Alexander The Great. Ptolemy when he became Pharaoh of Egypt named the new city Alexandria after his mentor and boss. Alexander named a few places for himself dotted around his conquest besides this.

There are hundreds of examples of the sort you describe and make interesting history

Answer 8

That is where most of the people came from during the formative years of the US. I think you will find that most Washingtons in the US are maned after George Washington.