Once, as a teenager, I switched channels on the TV, and there was a movie. A caption appeared on screen: “Rhode Island”.
“Nice!” I thought. “I always like movies set in cultures that are very foreign to mine.”
As the movie went on, I was increasingly confused, as those Greeks, or Turks, seemed very similar to US Americans, and the setting appeared to be the USA. (It was dubbed in French, so I couldn’t tell from the language)
I soon figured that it must be a location in the USA named after an Old World location.
New England has two types of place names. Old English colonial names and Native ones. Like a river called Woonasquatucket from the very same state you mentioned, Rhode Island.
Once, as a teenager, I switched channels on the TV, and there was a movie. A caption appeared on screen: “Rhode Island”.
“Nice!” I thought. “I always like movies set in cultures that are very foreign to mine.”
As the movie went on, I was increasingly confused, as those Greeks, or Turks, seemed very similar to US Americans, and the setting appeared to be the USA. (It was dubbed in French, so I couldn’t tell from the language)
I soon figured that it must be a location in the USA named after an Old World location.
New England has two types of place names. Old English colonial names and Native ones. Like a river called Woonasquatucket from the very same state you mentioned, Rhode Island.
Interesting.
Here in Québec, most towns and villages either have a native name, or saint’s name.