Alternate Names for American States

HillbillyJake

Hello All! This is hopefully going to be a collaborative thread where we can share alternate state names. I guess I'll start, more submissions are always welcome!

Tennessee
East TN - Franklin, Nickajack, Scott
Middle TN - Jackson, Nashville, Cumberland
West TN - Memphis, Jackson (I guess), Mississippi (a stretch)

Other
Nova Scotia / New Scotland - could go anywhere, really
Montverde / Ver(t)mont / Montenegro / Montalbano - could go somewhere with mountains.
 

thevaliant

Many years ago, on Soc-History-What-If (!), someone asked something similar for the name of the United States of America as a whole.

A lot of suggestions, often revolving around the word 'Columbia' instead of America, or 'Commonwealth' instead of United.

Eventually some wag suggested, "Combined Commonwealth of Columbian Provinces".
Oh how I laughed and laughed.
 

HillbillyJake

thevaliant said:
Many years ago, on Soc-History-What-If (!), someone asked something similar for the name of the United States of America as a whole.

A lot of suggestions, often revolving around the word 'Columbia' instead of America, or 'Commonwealth' instead of United.

Eventually some wag suggested, "Combined Commonwealth of Columbian Provinces".
Oh how I laughed and laughed.
Click to expand...
CCCP moment, too bad it's not Cyrillic tho
 

HillbillyJake

More "all-purpose" states, I guess:

British Monarchs
Virginia, Maryland, Elizabethton, Jamestown, Charleston, Georgia, etc.

French Monarchs
Louisiana, Mariana, etc,
 

1Big Rich

IIRC, there was a movement at one time for Western Pennsylvania, part of Ohio and part of what is now West Virginia to become "Westsylvania"

Connecticut was cut off by New York and New Jersey, so their 'Western Reserve" was placed on the other side of Pennsylvania. The name is still in use around Youngstown; in fact the mass transit company is called the "Western Reserve Transit Authority." So maybe a Western Reserve or West Connecticut?

Regards,
 

Bacs

West Virginia: North Virginia (a little more appropriate since Virginia stretches further west than WV, but NoVA may not like it), Kanawha (the original name), Allegheny, and Vandalia.
 

JErosion

Maine could have been Acadia, and if the mississippi territory was split North and South as opposed to east and west as in otl, we could have had the state of West Florida, with the North part of the territory being call Yazoo after the river of the same name.
 

HillbillyJake

JErosion said:
Maine could have been Acadia, and if the mississippi territory was split North and South as opposed to east and west as in otl, we could have had the state of West Florida, with the North part of the territory being call Yazoo after the river of the same name.
Click to expand...
This is awesome, IMO, not enough people use Yazoo.
 

Geoboy645

Wisconsin: Winnebago, Neenah, Wiskonsin or Wiskansin, Madison, Plumbum? (The latin word for Lead), Ouisconsing. Note: none of those names were ever proposed as alternate names with the exception of the different spellings. They just could have been different names that could have been thought of. Winnebago is from the Native American tribe and Lake. Neenah is the old name of the Fox River and means water. Wiskonsin and Wiskansin are both different spellings that were proposed in the 1830's. Madison for the president who died around when Wisconsin became a territory. And Plumbum for the Lead that drove Wisconsin's economy in the early days.
 

Bacs

jacobthebruh said:
Would Sylvania be a possibility for the region?
Click to expand...

In Kentucky there was an attempted colonial venture called Transylvania right before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. Then there was the proposed Westsylvania, which stretched from Southwestern Pennsylvania toward Eastern Kentucky (covering all of what is now West Virginia) around the same time. It's very possible to get either an Augusta or a form of Sylvania if circumstances & decisions had been different during the 1770s.
 

Gracchi

Banned
There's Franklin for areas like Northern Cali and East Tennessee. Possibly for Oregon as well, given the right POD
 

NorCalifornio

troosvelt_68 said:
Northern California as El Dorado, Southern California as California
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I love the name El Dorado, but see my post in the identical thread from Pre-1900. If the area everyone at the time had in mind when they thought "California" wasn't called California, the other state wouldn't be called California either. The name "Colorado" was thrown around a lot for potential states in what's now Southern and Central California, so El Dorado and Colorado is plausible enough.
 

Anarch King of Dipsodes

Every state or territory was defined and named before 1900, so this thread belongs in pre-1900. (There may have been some talk between 1900 and 1907 of OTL Oklahoma being named Sequoyah.)
 
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