Place names

[John York]

Flying around the USA, Australia and New Zealand I am continually surprised by the number of towns that reflect the names of the places in the UK the original residents came from.

 

It only goes to show how very homesick those people must have been, whatever the circumstances of their departure from their home Country.

 

Sad.

 

John

[Ian St]

True, many places down here link back to the home town of the original settlers.

On the flip side though, I was at Port Arthur recently, a notorious penal colony in Tasmania. Some very interesting readings there indicated that transportation was the best thing that happened to mnay of  them. After a time, most were released and able to forge a decent livelyhood on theor own land. They had a much better life and life expectancy then if they had stayed in the slums they were sent from.

[Guest]

That's right, of course.   But it was hard.  Especially, the conditions in the ships they sailed in.  I wonder sometimes how on earth they survived.  Tough people in those days.  The men were quite hardy too.     Perhaps I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today.  Time I got in the air I think.

 

John

[Traveller]

25 minutes ago, JohnY said:

That's right, of course.   But it was hard.  Especially, the conditions in the ships they sailed in.  I wonder sometimes how on earth they survived.  Tough people in those days.  The men were quite hardy too.     Perhaps I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today.  Time I got in the air I think.

 

John

 

Do not regret John.
There are certain theories that the whole human race was left here on earth by the province of another planet in the universe. That's why sometimes we feel nostalgic ... Jeez, will it? LoL

[JMBIII]

You need look no further than my state, Virginia, to see the same.  Many counties - York, Sussex, Essex, Buckingham, Chesterfield, New Kent; Cities & towns - Suffolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, Winchester, to name a few.  Then there are  the counties named  - King and Queen, King William, King George, Prince Edward, Prince George, Prince William, Charlotte, Louisa.

 

We have a Dilwyn, Olney, Wakefield, and Staunton (but not a Staunton on Arrow). And as much as I've searched the state we have no Ring o' Bells, Clock Face, Leighton Buzzard or Haltwhistle !

[Richard McDonald Woods]

I remember on a guided tour of Freemantle jail the guide, who coincidentally was brought up only 4 miles from me in UK, saying that the ironwork in the jail was often stripped from the convict ships and made them much less seaworthy for their return journey; that the colony of Western Australia was so short of skilled labour that most of the prisoners were let out to work during the days; and that however hardened criminals that they often were, they had left loved ones behind and wanted settlements to be named after the places that they had known.

Just think of inventing acceptable new names for places by the hundreds!

Very interesting but sad times.

[olderndirt]

Got me googling.  My home town is Rochester, WA and there are 18 other towns in the US named Rochester.  The obvious source, Rochester, Kent, UK has been around for a long time.

[Rodger Pettichord]

An interesting sidebar--there are at least fifty towns/cities in the UK that begin with "new..."  I guess us colonials don't have a lock on nostalgia. It appears to have been a fact in the old country too.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello Rodger,

I think you will find that in most cases, the places with "New" names are

either close by the original named place, such as Earswick and New Earswick,

near where I live, or they are a description of something that was indeed then

new, like New castle, New market, New biggin (house) and so on.

There is a New York in Lincolnshire but it has nothing to do with any other New Yorks

that there might be elsewhere, otherwise it would perhaps have to be New New York.

[Ken Q]

We live in Huntington, New York, USA, which is in Suffolk County.  We have friends who live in Beccles, also in Suffolk,  albeit over 3000 miles away in the U.K.  Incidentally, Huntington was named after Huntingdon, Oliver Cromwell's home town. The religious persuasion of the first settlers (1653) is obvious.

Ken

[Rodger Pettichord]

Nick--Interesting. Kind of an announcement that progress was happening?

[JMBIII]

Richard,  I claim my home town as Winchester (VA), too. I visited your Winchester back in 1970. It was during a visit of Portsmouth by my ship, the USS Yorktown. We had sailed  from Norfolk and earlier in the cruise we had visited Glasgow and Edinburgh (one of my shipmates was from Glasgow, VA. Many of my ancestors are buried in a cemetery in Edinburg{h}, Va.)

[Richard McDonald Woods]

The name of Rochester shows that it was also a Roman town in earlier years, the -chester denoting it as a 'castrum'.

Here in Hampshire, UK we also have the New Forest. The word forest does not denote trees but that it was a royal hunting ground. Named for William I, hunting deer and wild boar, presumably. 

[Gypsy Pilot]

 Most places and people are named to honor someone.