If only I had the self-confidence of the guy who went to Australia and said "this place is called New South Wales now."

I always wanted to be a fly on the wall when they named the colony (later state) of Virginia. "We should name this place after Queen Elizabeth."\ "Excellent idea, Elizabethia it is!"\ "No, no. Virginia. 'Cause she's never... you know. Wink wink, nudge nudge."

According to USPS, there are 32 towns in the US named Franklin. lol

I sometimes wonder why that isnt just "New Wales". Is there something so distinct about the south of Wales that makes it be seen as something distinct to name something after?

I grew up in a village whose name roughly translates to "Bob's place by the stream."

She was called the Virgin Queen

Alaskan settlers wanted to call their new town Ptarmigan cause there were plenty of those birds around. But they didn't know how to spell it, so they called it [Chicken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken,_Alaska).

Those are both from the same Mitchel and Webb sketch.

There are 88 towns named "Washington".

Yes, Wales is generally divided into North, Mid and South (and Corner, as in Cornwall). South Wales generally corresponds with the former Kingdom of Deheubarth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deheubarth?wprov=sfla1 Deheubarth was punished for rebelling against Engkand in 1282 by being divided into the three counties of South Wales. Referring to it as South Wales rather than south Wales is a miniature act of rebellion in itself; the Welsh government styles it capitalised to emphasise that historical distinction; the Britsh government uses lower case to erase the distinction.

USPS says Franklin tops the list at 32, but Washington is popular as well woth 24. Not sure about 88, though. What's your source?

Worldatlas.com but I don't know how reputable they are.

Oh, i see that. Interesting. Maybe differences in what's being considered as a town? Who knows.

Lots of Bismark and Moscow about too.

USPS has a way of combining smaller towns and suburbs to the largest nearby city. In practice this is very useful. You know your friend is near Nashville, say, and the zip codes do the heavy lifting. So I would posit that using USPS as a source in this case is not a great idea.

There is a Canada heritage minute about the last one https://youtu.be/nfKr-D5VDBU

Istanbul is literally "to the city" or in a way just "the city"

My d&d game tends to work better when I just name things like “The Nightmare Wood” and “The Old Hills”. The simplicity somehow lands harder.

Reminds me of > Torpenhow Hill is a hill in Cumbria, England. Its name consists of the Old English ‘Tor’, the Welsh ‘Pen’, and the Danish ‘How’ - all of which translate to modern English as ‘Hill’. Therefore, Torpenhow Hill would translate as hill-hill-hill hill

The Nullarbor plain sounds like an Aboriginal word, but it's just Latin and means "No trees" because there are no trees on it.