Alternate names for cities/countries

Okay, Howard Hughes does NOT leave Houston. Instead he spends most of his lunacy into finding dubious historical documents that on its founding in 1835 Houston was actually named Hughes-Town in honor of his grand-grandfather. As a reward for getting NASA to set up shop in his backyard, he gets the city renamed to its 'original' name Hugheston.
i sincerely doubt that: they would NEVER change the name from one of the most important figures in Texas history, i don't care HOW powerful Howard Hughes was. "Hugheston" would be a satirical/derisive name referring to his dominance of the city instead.
West Virginia could have been named Westylvania. Still one of my favorite proposed state names.
personally, i prefer Vandalia ;)


anyway, here's some that i've come up with for my ASB ATL:
  • some cities with Spanish-language names are changed during the various Spanish-American Wars partly because of irrational nationalist fervor during those times, but in the US they usually change back after the war while in the Aztec Empire they don't. examples include Angel City (Los Angeles), New Assisi (San Francisco, after the home of the city's namesake, Saint Francis), Holy Faith (Santa Fe; the change is permanent ITTL), Saint John (San Juan), North Pass (Ciudad Juarez
  • Mt. McKinley as Mt. Denali, the original native name (though for my TL the name is up in the air and may be named after whoever is POTUS during McKinley's OTL term)
  • the British Raj may be collectively known as Pondicherry (i can't remember what prompted me to add this to my notes, though); other options for the same region include Chennai=Madras, Kolkata=Calcutta, Kozhikhode=Calicut, Sri Lanka=Ceylon
  • a whole bunch of Roman-inspired names: Alcester=Alauna, Algiers=Icosium, Buxton=Aqua Arnemetiae (which may evolve in-universe into just Arnemet), Carmarthen=Moridunum (which may eventually become just Moridun), Dover=Dubris, Gloucester=Glevum/Glouvia, Leicester=Coritan, London=Londinium (which might become London anyway, or alternatively Londin), Newcastle upon Tyne=Pons Aelius (which could evolve into Ponsaelius or Ponsalius), Reading=Readingum (which may eventually become Reading anyway); Rochester has a convoluted history, going from Durobrivae to Durobrivis to Dorobrevis to Robrivis
  • Atlanta has two possibilities, either Marthasville or Terminus
  • Brighton may be Brighthelmstone, though it might evolve into Brighton anyway (or alternatively Brighthelm)
  • an obvious choice for a TL which doesn't have communist Vietnam is Ho Chi Minh City keeping its original name of Saigon
  • two options i found concerning Kyoto were Heian-kyo and Saikyo
  • some colonial African possibilities are Muranga'a=Fort Hall, Nyahururu=Thompson Falls
  • some straight Spanish language possibilities are Pasadena=Rancho San Pascual, San Diego=San Miguel, San Francisco=Yerba Buena
  • some Middle Eastern decisions i made include Tel Aviv being Jaffa (or Joppa) because Israel doesn't exist ITTL, the UAE being known as the Trucial Sheikdoms (and variations)
  • changes to Russian cities include Volgograd=Tsaritsyn
  • Winchester is known as Wintanbael
  • Georgia is called Sacartia, an alternate Anglicization of Sakartvelo (the Georgian name for Georgia)
  • Melbourne is either Bearbrass or Batmania (i'm going with Bearbrass because Batmania sounds silly :p before anyone asks, it was named after the founder, John Batman)
  • Montreal is Hochlega, after teh original Iroquoian fortified town that the city was built over
  • Casablanca is Casabranca, after the original Portuguese name
  • Morocco is Marrakesh, at least in English, after the capital city
  • New Guinea is Schouten Island, the original Dutch name for the island
  • i can't remember exactly why, but i decided on the alternate name of Statenland for New Zealand ITTL
 
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From my New Albion TL:


New Albion- from Drake's claim to Nova Albion; independent country stretching from OTL Bering Straits to San Francisco and inland to continental divide.

Provinces:
New Caledonia- Alaska and northern B.C; named by analogy with New Albion

New Hibernia- Queen Charlotte Islands; ditto; though the population was almost entirely Haida Indian, it was granted provincial staus in recognition of the Haida's service as North-West Company soldiers ("seaboys", corrupted from joking reference to 'sepoys') fighting Russians, Spanish, and Americans, the latter in defence of the Kingdom of Hawayee's status as a British protectorate.

Anson Island- Vancouver Island; the whole ATL originates with Anson's circumnavigation diverting up the west coast of North America to find the Northwest Passage

Western Columbia- southern B.C. plus northern Washington

Oraygun- southern Washigton plus Oregon; alternate spelling on early maps;

New Carolina- northern California; settled by Loyalists from the Carolinas and Georgia fleeing the ARW (they wanted someplace reasonably warm)

British Montana- Idaho and Utah, plus the western parts of Montana, Wyoming and Colorado; founded by a polygamous race-mixing sect formed from white, black and Iroquois Loyalists fleeing cross-country from the vengeful forces of the American revolutionaries (who have taken over Canada as well.)

Cities:

Franciston- San Francisco, but named after Francis Drake
Cook - Vancouver B.C; named after British explorer killed by North-West Coast Indians

Cliveton- Victoria, B.C.; national capital; named after Robert Clive; director of the North-West Company who founded the colonies on the coast.

Geographic features:
Dezhnyov Straits- Bering Straits; named after first European to actually go through them; compromise between Russians who wanted 'Bering Straits' and British who wanted 'Anson Straits'

Serpentine River- Snake River, Oregon; named by Robert Rogers, first explorer to cross the continent, after the Serpentine in London, both for its winding course and an attempt to curry favour with Queen Charlotte, who was its patroness.

Bitter Sea- Great Salt Lake; named in disappointment by explorers who had thought they were reaching an arm of the Pacific.
 
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[*]i can't remember exactly why, but i decided on the alternate name of Statenland for New Zealand ITTL

Statenlandt was the first name that Tasman gave to New Zealand, believing it to be part of the land of the same name in Tierra del Fuego, both supposedly connected via Terra Australis Incognita.

Speaking of New Zealand, how could I forget, I like the Endeavour Islands, based on Cook's ship. :)
 
Holy Faith (Santa Fe; the change is permanent ITTL)

Whoa, got a source? I would love it!

I know during the Mexican War and briefly thereafter a lot of places were actually given an English translation or corruption, or given entirely different English names before going back to Spanish names - Santa Fe is the only then-existing place I have not seen that happen for and would love to see it in writing. :)
 
Whoa, got a source? I would love it!

I know during the Mexican War and briefly thereafter a lot of places were actually given an English translation or corruption, or given entirely different English names before going back to Spanish names - Santa Fe is the only then-existing place I have not seen that happen for and would love to see it in writing. :)
"Holy Faith" is actually a direct translation of the Spanish name that i found, not an official English name--sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for a historical source. while i'm keeping Spanish names for alot of other American cities in the TL, Santa Fe just really bugged me for some reason so i came up with a permanent change instead. similarly, "Saint John" for San Juan and "North Pass" for Ciudad Juarez are also direct translations, with North Pass coming from an older name for the city (iirc it was Ciudad Juarez del Norte or something like that)

if you have any sources on some of the other name changes from the Mexican-American War, i'd be much obliged if you could show me--ya never know when that kind of thing might come in handy
 
some cities with Spanish-language names are changed during the various Spanish-American Wars partly because of irrational nationalist fervor during those times, but in the US they usually change back after the war while in the Aztec Empire they don't. examples include Angel City (Los Angeles), New Assisi (San Francisco, after the home of the city's namesake, Saint Francis), Holy Faith (Santa Fe; the change is permanent ITTL), Saint John (San Juan), North Pass (Ciudad Juarez)

Alternatively with a more severe backlash against everything German in WWI and 'II, many German sounding towns could be changed to a more politically correct name,
Bismark ND would become Lewis or Clark or even Roosevelt... New Braunfels would become Graystone or such... And then there are all those smaller places like New Muenster, New Berlin, New Saxony etc...
 
In a timeline I composed for althist.wikia.com, I came up with a few Greek names for towns in OTL Ukraine (because in that timeline the region would be secured against nomadic incursions and relatively closely associated with the Mediterranean civilizations):
Severopolis for Kiew (because the Slavic tribe of the Severi lived in the region)
Chortitia for Zaporizhya (Khortitsya is the etymologically obscure name of the island in the Dnieper that`s part of today`s town)
Chrysosydor for Volgograd (because the Tatar name for the town "Zarizyn" meant "yellow water", and Chrysosydor means just that in Greek)
 
Virginia = Tudoria
New Zealand = New Jutland

You can, of course, have different explorers or cartographs give different names to areas.
But OTL New Zealand is named for the Dutch province of Zeeland, not the Danish island of Sjaelland. So Jutland would by a strange step sideways.
 
if you have any sources on some of the other name changes from the Mexican-American War, i'd be much obliged if you could show me--ya never know when that kind of thing might come in handy

Sure. :) Big post coming up.

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San Francisco City was named after the Bay, but the Bay itself was translated (IE. 'Bay of St. Francis') or named for Sir Francis Drake by patriotic English-speakers, sometimes using the word 'Port' than Bay. So it'd look like '(Sir) (Francis) Drake's Port', OR 'Bay/Port (of) (Sir) (Francis) Drake'. I myself like Drake's Port since that's easiest to turn into one word, Drakesport, that would fit in with American naming schemes involving the -port suffix and my preference for one-word city names. Altho' Port Drake crops up slightly more in my sources.

(I won't link you because I have too many links and maps, but PM for a specific name)

Albuquerque was two villages: the original Hispanic settlement, and a mile off was 'New Albuquerque', where Americans settled and took over the Hispanic settlement in a merger and became the OTL downtown. More importantly, it became known even more simply as 'Newtown' till the merger: https://books.google.com/books?id=s...albuquerque" "(newtown)" "population"&f=false

The American El Paso was known briefly as Smithsville before being merged into a city plat that swallowed every habitat up into it under the current name: http://epcc.libguides.com/content.php?pid=309255&sid=2605921

San Jose was briefly St. Joseph: https://books.google.com/books?id=b...Ag#v=onepage&q="pueblo of st. joseph"&f=false

Los Angeles was *always* known as 'City/Town of (the) Angels' till incorporation. A la 'City of Mexico' becoming merely 'Mexico City' you could simplify it to 'Angels City/-to(w)n'. Here's as 'Town of the Angels': https://books.google.com/books?id=T...q="town of angels" "upper california"&f=false

San Antonio was known as Bexar originally, which probably flowed off Anglo tongues better: http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth39846/m1/53/

Sacramento as Suttersville: https://books.google.com/books?id=Y...page&q="Suttersville" name Sacramento&f=false

Las Vegas as Bringhurst: http://old.lasvegasnevada.gov//files/MormonFortnom.pdf
 
America=Riccia after the Genovese explorer, Alessandro Ricci, who "discovered" it (really it was discovered by the Irish in the 700s)

No real proof the Irish made it. It was really discovered by the Native Americans thousands of years ago.

Armorica for Normandy.

Armorica was the Latin name for Brittany, was it not? Hence 'Armour'?

West Virginia could have been named Westylvania. Still one of my favorite proposed state names.

I prefer Vandalia myself, but that's just me.

Maybe London could have instead derived its name from the end of 'Londinium', being Dinium.

New York could maybe be Jamestown, named after the Duke's name, rather than title. Or Stuart, for his family name.
 
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