use Perl

• It's... (Score:2)

  by barbie (2653)

  Boston.

  As to why you remember them I have no idea. A friend of mine was an au-pair there years ago, and she found it amusing that a many of the streets were named after British towns and cities :)
  • Re:It's... (Score:1)

    by jdporter (36) on 2004.01.17 23:28 (#27495) Homepage Journal

    Well, that's an au pair for ya. Anybody with half a brain wouldn't find it amusing. Hell, Boston itself was named after a British town. It is "New England", after all. Every geographic feature there is named after a place in England, or else it has an Indian name. (To overgeneralize a little...)
    
    O.k., just for fun, here are the names of the 50 states, categorized by the origin of the name.
    
    Indian names (mostly names of tribes in the area):
    Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi,
    Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming
    
    Named after English persons:
    Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia
    
    Named for places in England:
    New Hampshire
    New Jersey
    New York
    
    Neo-classical:
    California
    Indiana
    
    Spanish:
    Arizona
    Colorado
    Florida
    Montana
    Nevada
    
    French:
    Maine
    Vermont
    
    Seems like the Spanish and French preferred to assign names which were descriptive of the terrain/climate. In this regard, California ought to be lumped in with the Spanish names. (and maybe Indiana could be lumped with the Indian names, even though it isn't one...)
    

    Reply to This

    Parent

    • Re:It's... (Score:2)

      by barbie (2653)

      Well, that's an au pair for ya

      Hence the smiley.

      Did you also know there are a 'Hollywood [multimap.com]' and 'California [multimap.com]' here in Birmingham, UK.
      • Re:It's... (Score:2)

        by drhyde (1683)

        And there's a Maryland in east London.
    • Re:It's... (Score:1)

      by avik (3911)

      Dont' forget other French names: Illinois, Des Moines, Detroit, Terre Haute, Racine, Baton Rouge tonns of them ...
    • Re:It's... (Score:1)

      by jdporter (36)

      Ooh, I made one mistake when I typed this up. (I had thought of it earlier, but forgot.) Namely:
      
      Louisiana is named for a French person, not an English person.