Ambiguous City Names

[formulanone]

How about within states?

NJ has 5 Washington Twps (down from 6), and rarely are they referenced in such a way where you can easily figure it out without context.

Seems like the perfect address to live at if you're in the Witness Protection Program.

Personally, I have no idea why you would want to do that to yourselves. Isn't some sort of Postmaster supposed to vet the names to prevent duplicates? Or does nobody care because there's no authority within a township?

When I think of this thread title, it's not the duplicates that strike me as ambiguous, so much as place names that are entirely generic. Like...Southland, Northfield, Spring Hill, West Point, or if you live in Florida, some variant of Coral / Palm / Spring / Glade.

[webny99]

Wilmington, North Carolina, versus Wilmington, Delaware; this was even ambiguous when I was attending law school in North Carolina because some people referred to the Delaware one without specifying, which led some of us to assume they meant the local one.

That's a good one, because neither is particularly well-known or of national importance, so it's probably ambiguous for most of the country. I would have guessed Wilmington, DE was the bigger of the two, but it actually only has a population of 70,000 to Wilmington, NC's 122,000. That just goes to show that it's ambiguous to me, if nothing else!

I mentioned the two Charlestons (West Virginia and South Carolina) in another thread a few days ago. Some people refer to "Charlie West" and "Charlie South" to distinguish.

Charleston, WV is much closer for me, but I still think of the SC one first and foremost, not least because of its rich history. The WV Charleston is just not on my radar for some reason. West Virginia just isn't associated with cities or urbanization, and it is under 50K in population (although it feels bigger than that), so maybe that plays into it.

[Roadgeekteen]

Wilmington, North Carolina, versus Wilmington, Delaware; this was even ambiguous when I was attending law school in North Carolina because some people referred to the Delaware one without specifying, which led some of us to assume they meant the local one.

That's a good one, because neither is particularly well-known or of national importance, so it's probably ambiguous for most of the country. I would have guessed Wilmington, DE was the bigger of the two, but it actually only has a population of 70,000 to Wilmington, NC's 122,000. That just goes to show that it's ambiguous to me, if nothing else!

That's probably because Wilmington DE is more prominent in its state than Wilmington NC.

[webny99]

How did I miss the most obvious one, Kansas City, KS and MO?

Eh, those are the same place as far as most of us are concerned. 

[webny99]

Not the same, but Ontario CA sometimes gets confused with the Canadian province with that name, to the point where some airline passengers reportedly get ticketed to the wrong airport.

Well, it certainly doesn't help that CA could mean California or Canada.

Around here, we also have an Ontario County, a town of Ontario (in neighboring Wayne County), a lake Ontario, and an Ontario Beach. Not to mention being less than 2 hours from the border with Ontario, Canada.  So as far as I'm concerned, Ontario is a word for which context is an absolute must.

[jeffandnicole]

Wilmington, North Carolina, versus Wilmington, Delaware; this was even ambiguous when I was attending law school in North Carolina because some people referred to the Delaware one without specifying, which led some of us to assume they meant the local one.

That's a good one, because neither is particularly well-known or of national importance, so it's probably ambiguous for most of the country. I would have guessed Wilmington, DE was the bigger of the two, but it actually only has a population of 70,000 to Wilmington, NC's 122,000. That just goes to show that it's ambiguous to me, if nothing else!

I mentioned the two Charlestons (West Virginia and South Carolina) in another thread a few days ago. Some people refer to "Charlie West" and "Charlie South" to distinguish.

Charleston, WV is much closer for me, but I still think of the SC one first and foremost, not least because of its rich history. The WV Charleston is just not on my radar for some reason. West Virginia just isn't associated with cities or urbanization, and it is under 50K in population (although it feels bigger than that), so maybe that plays into it.

Wilmington, the city, has 70k. Wilmington, the region with a Wilmington zip code, is probably much larger than its NC rival.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Virginia, MN vs. Virginia the state. This is usually disambiguated when someone says "up in Virginia"  which refers to the MN city, or "down/out"  in Virginia for the state. A lot of people just use "Iron Range"  for Virginia, MN's region as a whole anyway. I was listening to a radio show when the pro-gun protests took place in Virginia, the state. Simultaneously, there was one in Hibbing, MN next door to Virginia, MN. This did cause some confusion about which rally was being discussed.

[ozarkman417]

There are many examples of this in Germany, if you don't include the "in/am/an der (river name)", such as Frankfurt am Main and Frankfurt an der Oder, or Landsberg am Lech and Landsberg an der Warthe (Modern-day Gorzow Wielkopokski, Poland). There are also a lot of Neustadts "New City".

[dlsterner]

There's also Washington DC versus Washington State.  Pennsylvania, Virginia, and several other states also have a Washington.  But typically it's either the District of Columbia or the state.

On that note, the NFL a few years back sold "state pride" front license plates.  Humorously, they got this one wrong

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Grand Marais, MN and Grand Marais, MI. Both are located on Lake Superior at the foot of popular tourist destinations.

[kendancy66]

When our company was merger into a larger company that was based in Glendale, AZ  my fellow employee thought that the Glendale office was in Glendale, CA

[kendancy66]

How about Pennsylvania, that has cities named after other states like California and Wyoming

[US 89]

Glendale is also both a neighborhood of Salt Lake City and a small town in southern Utah.

[citrus]

In the Bay Area, there's local confusion on occasion between the city of Richmond (in Contra Costa County) and the Richmond District in San Francisco (north of Golden Gate Park, south of the Presidio). And the hyperlocal version: when I was working in Santa Clara County, "Castro Street" could mean the main commercial street of Mountain View, but was more likely to refer to Castro Street in San Francisco.

On a national scale, "Portland" always means Oregon here, but I grew up in Rhode Island, where it always meant Maine.

[kphoger]

New York

[Roadgeekteen]

New York

What other New York's exist?

[kphoger]

New York

What other New York's exist?

The state, obviously.

If you say you're from New York, people aren't sure if you mean the city or the state.  Unless I read it wrong, the OP didn't specify that both locations must be cities.  Apparently, I read it wrong.

[hbelkins]

New York

What other New York's exist?

Seems to me I've driven through a small town called New York, Ill.

As to Louisville, the city makes liberal use of the fleur de lis in its imaging.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I'm surprised it took this many posts to mention the two Vancouvers, although I don't know why that confuses anyone outside of the PNW.

[Roadgeekteen]

New York

What other New York's exist?

The state, obviously.

If you say you're from New York, people aren't sure if you mean the city or the state.  Unless I read it wrong, the OP didn't specify that both locations must be cities.  Apparently, I read it wrong.

I feel like almost everyone assumes the city.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

New York

What other New York's exist?

The state, obviously.

If you say you're from New York, people aren't sure if you mean the city or the state.  Unless I read it wrong, the OP didn't specify that both locations must be cities.  Apparently, I read it wrong.

I feel like almost everyone assumes the city.

They do in my region. I've spent a fair amount of time in NYS, never been to NYC. Always asked what museums, whatever I was planning to see and I'd have to specify I wasn't going to the city.

[kphoger]

I assume the opposite.  I figure someone will say "New York City" if they mean the city, same as people will say "Mexico City" if they mean the city.

[Henry]

When San Antonio is mentioned, it almost always means the city in TX, but there is also San Antonio, NM.

[GaryV]

How about within states?

NJ has 5 Washington Twps (down from 6), and rarely are they referenced in such a way where you can easily figure it out without context.

Seems like the perfect address to live at if you're in the Witness Protection Program.

Personally, I have no idea why you would want to do that to yourselves. Isn't some sort of Postmaster supposed to vet the names to prevent duplicates? Or does nobody care because there's no authority within a township?

Michigan has several instances of township names being duplicated in different counties.  In most cases they have nothing to do with the post office name, unless the township gets so big that it gets a post office to itself, or a community within the township has the same name as the township.

Except for the larger townships that are suburbs of cities, no one knows where they are.  Yet newspaper stories use the township name in the byline.  Ugh.  Where did this thing take place?  Maybe later in the text it will say something like "27 miles northeast of Grand Rapids", if you're lucky.

Grand Marais, MN and Grand Marais, MI. Both are located on Lake Superior at the foot of popular tourist destinations.

Eh, those early French explorers.  They didn't know one big swamp (marsh) from another.

Another name is Presque Isle.  "Hey this peninsula looks almost like an island!  That's what I'll call it."

[kphoger]

When San Antonio is mentioned, it almost always means the city in TX, but there is also San Antonio, NM.

But it's difficult to imagine a context in which someone would get them mixed up.  Otherwise, this would be a thread about all the large cities that also have a namesake small town in some other state.  (such as Des Moines, if we stick with NM)