Must be wild for someone to come to Massachusetts from England and know the names of almost every town around them.

Sure, but the emotional valences are all fucked. "I'm from Chelsea" rings different, na' mean?

To bad we didn't ape some of the more fun British town names like Bitchfield,Netherthong, Cocks, Shitterton, Scratch Arse Ware, Wetwang or Fingeringhoe.

(look em up I'm not making those up.

Place names are very interesting and often changed much over the centuries. For example Exeter (we have one in NH and one in RI locally) was founded by the Romans as "Isca," Over the centuries it became Exanceaster, Excester and finally Exeter.

If a town name ends in Cester or Chester, for example Gloucester, Exeter or Worcester, it comes from the old English ceaster which means a Roman fort or town. It is a borrowing from the Latin "castrum."

A name ending in sex denotes a Saxon origin. For example Essex was the land of the East Saxons. There is also Middlesex, Sussex etc.

Borough is a corruption of the Saxon burh which meant a fort or fortified town. King Alfred the great was famous for establishing burhs across his kingdom.

A town name ending in Ham meant village or estate.

Wic means trading settlement or dwelling place.

Oh it is lol.

ITT: you missed a couple!

There is a great video that talks just about that! Map Men

What I'm curious about is the lack of "New" prefix to town names like New York, New Hampshire, New England, New London, New Haven... etc

You say you want a revolution

I visited Christchurch NZ once and one of the main streets in the city center is Worcester street. One of the first things I asked was how they pronounced it and it's the same as us. Some of the locals were impressed I pronounced it correctly first try.

Norton (north)
Sutton (south)
Easton (east)
Weston (west)
Middleton (middle)

What happened in Mass?

EDIT: map

That's neat, I've never seen it laid out like this

I can imagine I did. I hope to expand the map to include the Midlands, Scotland and Ireland plus include the other New England states. Maine was technically Massachusetts in the early days and should follow in naming convention

Definitely. A college friend from England came home with me and was weirded out when the highway sign listed a town from next to where he went to school and as he kept seeing other familiar place names.

I grew up near a place in England called Cockwood lol

>New York

It'll always be New Amsterdam to me.

>A town name ending in Ham meant village or estate.

Ah, so "hamlet" must be related to this?

As a word nerd, I enjoyed your post very much. Upstate NY has interesting names as well -- I learned that the town names ending in "-kill" are related to the Dutch term for "creek".

Any in Scotland or Ireland?

Kill Van Kull always surprised me.

When I first saw it, my first thought was what did Van Kull do that you want to murder him?!

Missing Lincoln, just northwest of Boston!

It's crazy that the British left their country, crossed an ocean, and discovered a place where the towns all had the same names!

/s

Big +1 to map men, and this is one of their best!

"Could you mispronounce Frome for me?"

Royal Borough of Kingston! Maybe now that the royals are here we could get them to elevate the commuter rail station there…

And Chelsea in West London. Shirley, Weston and Stoneham are also suburbs of my hometown (Southampton)

Exeter, Newport and Portsmouth all on that map not circled too

To be fair Weston is west of Boston

I went to Sandy Balls once. There is also a place in the far north of Scotland called Twatt. Which is kinda ironic because I am from the south coast of England. And what’s the similarity between my hometown and my sex life throughout most of my life until my mid 20s (apart from a few glorious years around 20/21)? Despite my best efforts, I was always a long way from Twatt. Badom ting.

Hamlet has really entwined roots. I've copy pasted below because I'll explain it poorly if I do it myself. It's also interesting that while hamlet has partly French routes, town is obviously old English (tun) and city comes from the Latin word civitas.

From Middle English hamlet, hamelet, a borrowing from Old French hamelet, diminutive of Old French hamel, in turn diminutive of Old French ham, of Germanic origin, from Frankish *haim, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *haimaz (whence English home). Equivalent to Middle English ham (“home, village”) +‎ -let (“small”).

Just Massachusetts here

I know! Just pointing it out, thought it was interesting :)

You know, I wasn’t sure if Lincoln was for Abe or for the UK. The three most common town names in Massachusetts are places in the UK, Native American words and Founding Fathers.

I’m hoping to expand to include the whole of the British Isles.

Where’s Flutieville?

Yep we're there over Christmas...from the cathedral city of Lincoln here in the UK

My home town in the UK... fabulous medieval cathedral, once the tallest building in the world for 300 years!

Boston College is in Chesnut Hill on the border with Newton. His statue is at the stadium

Not trying to be pedantic here but Scratch Arse Ware is not a town or village, it’s the name of a hiking trail and it’s Fingrininghoe.

But there other places over here called Penistone. There’s a name of a road called Fanny Hands Road. Fanny doesn’t mean ass in the UK, it means the name of a female body part.

Billerica here - Billericay there pretty 😎

I live nearish to Newhaven, England. It’s spelled like that, one word.

I've been to Brighton over in the UK, London and the UK is a great country to visit and I've been several times w/USAF and now as a civilian. Back in 2007 I was on a mission to get patches from each fire department w/the same name of my department. I contacted the one over there (it doesn't exist per-se) I did a patch swap of my fire department to the one over there and ended up corresponding w/a guy from that department. I try to go to London on even years each Dec and we meet up, he's been here a few times as well and we met up out in Framingham while he was staying in Boston w/his wife. Great guy, has a nice wife, works as a paramedic for NHS, great friend, all because of a patch swap in 2007.

It’s even more wild to come from Massachusetts moved to England and surprise everyone of them by being able to pronounce the names correctly unlike most Americans.

Interestingly Cambridge, MA was originally known as Newtowne. Once Harvard was founded, naming the town after the famous university city in England appealed to the citizens.

The -ham suffix is ultimately related to the word “home.” German cognate is “-heim”, such as “Mannheim.” “Heim” also directly translates to home.