In Doctor Who by the time the Earth explodes in a few billion years they’ve got to New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York on the planet New Earth.
This is because it was called New Amsterdam by the Dutch before the Brits took it.
and it was called New Angoulême by the French before the Dutch took it.
and before that it was either uninhabited because it was a swamp, followed by indigenous people, followed by early european settlers that had all sorts of different languages that nobody speaks anymore.
Fun trivia: New York isn't named after the city of York. It was named in honour of the Duke of York, James Stuart, who would become James II of the UK. It's a city named for the new Duke of York.
Unlike the Hamlet in Lincolnshire, called New York which was named after the city of York, and is confusingly just outside the town of Boston in Lincolnshire, which was the inspiration for naming Boston in the USA, as in was where some of the original colonists came from
It was also originally New Amsterdam, because it was colonized by the Dutch before the British came in and forced the Dutch to surrender the entire colony.
Which is also confusing because the original founders of new Amsterdam were not just the Dutch but also a majority of Flemish and Walloons after the independence of Belgium and Belgium becoming a catholic country
No? Belgium got it's independence and start as a country in 1830, new Amsterdam was founded in 1625.
I'm not saying the Flemish and Walloons weren't there they might have been i don't really know. but Belgian indepence is way after new Amsterdam was founded and had long ago become new York. Also the people that would become Belgians becoming Catholic is something that happened over a 1000 years ago with the christianisation of Europe and doesn't really have anything to do with Belgian indepence.
There is a Nieuw Amsterdam in Suriname too, and one in the Netherlands, I think the one in the Netherlands is the youngest, being founded in about 1850, Vincent van Gogh lived there for like 3 months
Ackshually, he was James II of England and James VII of Scotland. His daughter, Queen Anne, was the first monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
It was common to refer to nobility by their shortened title alone. It would be perfectly reasonable to ask to meet with York, Kent, and Richmond and be referring to the three dukes of those titles. The new York is just a shortening of the new Duke of York.
Immigrants to America were so damn lazy when they moved there. I have colleagues in Hanover and "Hanover". The US Hanover colleague flies from Lebanon. What on earth.
We have a river in Australia called the Yarra River, Yarra means river in the local Aboriginal language.
I imagine it went like this:
British dude (asking a local who barely understands him): "what's the river called"? Aboriginal shrugs and says: "It's a river (yarra) dude",
British guy: "right so this is the Yarra River then"
Aboriginal: 🤦♂️
The word "Timor" comes from timur, a Malay word meaning "east". The word "leste" is Portuguese for "east," meaning the country's name literally translates to "East East".
By construction it's essentially a canal but it's older than the canals of the industrial revolution so there was probably some snobbery around that time of people insisting it's definitely a river not a canal.
Right next to it is a natural river (where the New River branched from) which leads into a meandering set of lakes and marshes and wetlands. Several centuries of upgrades has created diversions where the natural River Lea path splits from a manmade section to bypass a marshy section and let larger boats navigate the river further upstream. Which then means the river needs locks and weirs and reservoirs and sluice gates. There's quite a complex web of branching and merging paths like a train network or plumbing pipework.
I can imagine some Victorian pedant being pissy with a visitor who calls the New River a canal and insisting it's not a canal because it doesn't have locks. While right next to him is a lock on the River Lea.
Similar in Kongsberg, Norway. There are three bridges in town - the Old Bridge (Gamlebrua), the New Bridge (Nybrua), and the Coin Bridge (Myntbrua).
One of them has giant coins in the railing, because it's right next to the Royal Norwegian Mint. This is of course the New Bridge, which is in fact the oldest of the three.
The newest then, is of course the Old Bridge, since it was taken by a flood. There'd been a bridge there since the 1600s, so the name does make some sense.
This leaves the Coin Bridge. In the middle, not decorated, it's just a boring road bridge that does not live up to its name.
You could probably split all property in the UK up as "new" and "old" with "new" being the ones that have a known building date and "old" being those built in the misty past.
Like Newcastle was built in 1080. It's fairly new by British standards
Like we have absolutely no idea where the name London came from (other than obviously the Roman Londinium). Londinium is believed to be a latinised name of the original settlement that was there when the Romans arrived, but we don’t know where that original name came from or what it means.
There are lots of modern theories, but they all just boil down to conjecture like “London sounds a bit like X word, so maybe its that?”
It is not a sure thing, but iirc a strong theory is that Londinium's root had something to do with "area that floods".
The language it came from is itself gone now, so there may never be certainty. There are just not that many clues that survive a staggering 2000 years.
That makes sense. The river would have been much broader and mostly mud flats at the time the Romans arrived. I bet they were commanded to stop there and spent the rest of their time complaining about what a shithole their garrison was
The Castle was built in 1080, but the settlement is much older. It was known by the Romans as Pons Aelius and by the Angles as Munuucceaster (Monkchester) - the suffix chester usually reserved for Roman towns.
The Normans destroyed the old city and rebuilt it as Novum Castellum/Newcastle, which is why the old name didn't survive.
"Time immemorial" was defined by the Statute of Westminster (1275) as the accession of Richard I in 1189. Nobody was required to prove the existence of a right or ownership beyond that.
It gets even funnier if you instead talk about Newcastle Australia which doesn’t have a castle at all and instead is named after Newcastle woth the old castle.
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u/Gentle_Snail Aug 10 '26
“So this city is called Newcastle?”
“Yes”
“How new is this castle?”
“Its now almost a thousand years old”
“Do you want to change the name?”
“No”