What if England acquired it during/after William&Mary's reign? Would be less likely to be named after a duke of York when there isn't one?
Alternate names for real world cities?
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After all, Britain generally didn't rename towns if there was really no reason to (Quebec, St. Augustine, Cape Town etc pretty much just had their names or pronunciations Anglicized)
There is an interesting example from Italy. There is a small town in Basilicata (southern Italy) who changed name from Salvia to Savoia di Lucania in 1878. The reason was that a guy from that town, Giovanni Passannante, tried to kill King Umberto I of Savoi without success, so the populace wanted to make a "conciliatory" move towards the dynasty and changed the name. The name could have been restored at any time after the fall of the Monarchy. Now that I think about that, in southern Italy the city of Benevento (Campania) had its name changed from the original Maleventum by the Romans after they won a battle against Pyrrhus in the surroundings of the city. Maybe they lose there, but eventually still win, and the city gets its unlucky original name.
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Generally true, but I do ponder since it was within formally-claimed English territory and Yankees were moving into New Netherland since it was almost created, so there was always an English cultural element to it. Quebec and St. Augustine at least have the luxury of being outside of and on the edge of originally-English settlement in the New World. The Plymouth colonists originally sought to settle New York City's site before being blown off-wind to their real-world site. It'd be a deep and fun irony if they did settle, or the name New Plymouth applied anyway to *New York as THE port metropolis of the colonies.
I've seen in historical texts Quebec anglicized as Cabeck, and of course Montreal as Mount Royal. If these cities were conquered earlier when less Canadians were around and/or thus had more time for more Anglo-Americans to move in and truly anglicize the colony, perhaps it could eventually change to those.
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I think it is very unlikely that New Amsterdam will become English when Dutchman William III was king
On the other hand the London merchant class had a strong, century-long grudge against Amsterdam at the time.
A successful Plymouth Colony at the mouth of the Hudson would make for fascinating timeline though...
In Michigan, if the Grand River retained a derivation of its indigenous name (Owashtinong) as Kalamazoo did... Grand Haven (at it's entry into Lake Michigan) and Grand Rapids would likely have different names. For Grand Haven, potentially Ferrysburg after the first settler in the region. Grand Rapids could also have easily been called Kent Rapids, like the county, for the New York jurist.
