History Main / AirstripOne

** "Zone 1" [[spoiler:Central London; a reference to the innermost fare zone of the London Underground, but commonly used in other contexts. There are actually six such zones, but Zone 1 has the highest concentration of notable landmarks.]]

* A lighter example is how the U.S. congressional district names go along the lines of [State]'s [Number] Congressional District - in contrast to the U.K., the country it descended from, which gives each of its 650 parliamentary constituencies unique names. You might think this is because the districts are often significantly redrawn after each decennial Census. However, it is quite possible, especially with computers, to draw districts with largely consistent boundaries, as the British do. The real reason for this is because most districts in the US are so gerrymandered that giving an accurate geographic name would be nigh-impossible. Some Americans actually advocate a switch to the named-district system in order to make the gerrymandering more obvious and hopefully discourage it
** Plus, the numbering doesn't follow any consistent scheme—the same area can be the 1st district one election and the 13th the next (this happened to substantial chunks of Detroit in 1992). And if a district becomes so redrawn its geography is warped, well, you can just rename it to fit the new boundaries.

* By the time of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars'' in 2047, the spread of [[AlienKudzu Tiberium]] across the planet has led to the collapse of all the world's nation-states, so the [[UnitedNationsIsASuperpower Global Defense Initiative]] and [[NGOSuperpower Brotherhood of Nod]] are the only factions able to provide any sort of governance. There are presumably administrative regions within the groups' respective territories, but for the most part the world is categorized based upon the degree of Tiberium contamination. GDI-controlled "Blue" zones have sparse if any uncontained Tiberium, and enjoy the highest standards of living. "Yellow" zones, home to Nod and outcast groups like the mutant Forgotten, are arid badlands with an obvious Tiberium presence. "Red" zones are more or less [[HostileTerraforming xenoformed hellscapes of mutagenic alien crystals,]] and extremely hostile to terrestrial life. Zones are separated both by borders with other colors and by the oceans, so each piece is often referred to by a letter-number code for brevity -- for example, the Blue Zone that stretches across the Eastern Seaboard of the United States is B-2.

* By the time of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars'', the spread of [[AlienKudzu Tiberium]] across the planet has led to the collapse of all the world's nation-states, so the [[UnitedNationsIsASuperpower Global Defense Initiative]] and [[NGOSuperpower Brotherhood of Nod]] are the only factions able to provide any sort of governance. There are presumably administrative regions within the groups' respective territories, but for the most part the world is categorized based upon the degree of Tiberium contamination. GDI-controlled "Blue" zones have sparse if any uncontained Tiberium, and enjoy the highest standards of living. "Yellow" zones, home to Nod and outcast groups like the mutant Forgotten, are arid badlands with an obvious Tiberium presence. "Red" zones are more or less [[HostileTerraforming xenoformed hellscapes of mutagenic alien crystals,]] and extremely hostile to terrestrial life.

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WebAnimation/IfTheEmperorHadATextToSpeechDevice'' tabletop spinoff ''[=WarHams=]'', where a party of Imperials are so disgusted by the TastesLikeDiabetes name of Rumma Tum Tums Farm that they designate it Meat Place Alpha and make their native entourage refer to it as such. [[DownplayedTrope Although they don't permanently change the name]].

* The English names for most places in Ireland are Anglicisations of their Irish names. ''Dún na nGall'' becomes Donegal. Several towns around the country are called Ballymore, from the Irish ''Baile Mor''. ''Baile Mor'' literally means "Big Town".
** This was an integral part of Britain (read England's) dominance of its Celtic provinces. Even the most liberal opinion held that it was an act of kindness and education to eliminate the inferior Celtic languages and to ensure the benighted natives grew up speaking only English, so as to equip them for survival in the wider world and British Empire. Other opinion held that deliberately deracinating the Irish and Scottish from speaking their crude barbaric language (thus cutting them away from direct contact with their own cultural traditions and history) was necessary to prevent any more revolts in Ireland and would diminish the possibility of the Scots picking up where they left off in 1745. This was done so effectively that Cornish and Manx effectively dissappeared as everyday spoken languages, Gaelic was driven to the very fringes in Scotland and Ireland, and even Welsh was driven into decline.[[note]]But is now resurgent; Gaelic is gradually increasing in numbers of speakers in Scotland and Ireland and militant diehards are reviving Cornish and Manx[[/note]]. The "Welsh Not" is still remembered with anger: Welsh children were routinely beaten in school for speaking Welsh until the language won parity and full recognition.
** The Academie Francaise is still determined to eliminate non-standard French dialects and related languages: its attitude to Breton is much the one the English administrators of Wales had for Welsh, and its influence as the legally binding arbitrator and enforcer of Standard French has pretty much wiped out the Occitan and Catalan tonguers spoken in the Spanish border regions and the Languedoc of the south.
* Nepal's latest Constitution went into effect in 2015, dividing the country into seven provinces. As their boundaries were drawn up based on logistical and political convenience rather than historical significance or culture, these provinces only have numbers, not names when they are established in January 2018. As of writing (end of Aug 2021), five of them have been given proper names. Only Province No. 1 and Province No. 2 have yet to receive any.

* ''ComicBook/CaptainBritain'': The Captain Britian Corps - gathering of the counterparts of Captain Britain from every alternate version of Earth - includes a Captain Airstrip-One who seems to hail from a world very similar to Orwell's ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''.

* ''ComicBook/CaptainBritain'': The Corps - gathering of the counterparts of Captain Britain from every alternate version of Earth - includes a Captain Airstrip-One who seems to hail from a world very similar to Orwell's ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''.

* In ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' there is Mega-City 1, Luna-City 1, [[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp East Meg 1 and East Meg 2]]. There used to be Mega Cities 2 and 3 as well, but [[DesignatedHero Dredd]] [[WhatTheHellHero nuked]] Mega-City 2, and Mega-City 3 broke away from the union [[AfterTheEnd following the Atomic Wars]], becoming Texas City instead. Other nations include Euro Cit, Pan Africa, Murphyville and Brit Cit.

->''"Even the names of the countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different. Airstrip One, for instance, had not been so called in those days: it had been called England or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been called London."''

* In ''Literature/LookToTheWest'', this is how the Societist Combine renames its territories, in keeping with the Societist beliefs that acknowledging unique characteristics of different areas leads to division and war. Each zone is numbered, and each city has a "name" of the style Zone''x''Urb''y''.

* In ''Literature/LookToTheWest'', this is how Societist countries rename their territories, in keeping with the Societist beliefs that acknowledging unique characteristics of different areas leads to division and war. Each zone is numbered, and each city has a "name" of the style Zone''x''Urb''y''.

** The city of Hanyang or Hanseong was renamed Keijou (Gyeongseong in Korean) after the [[UsefulNotes/NorthKorea annexation of]] [[UsefulNotes/SouthKorea Korea]] by Imperial Japan, which just ment "Capital City", as it was the seat of the colonial government at the time. It is ironic that after independence, the South renamed the capital city "UsefulNotes/{{Seoul}}", which was a Korean word that ment exactly the same thing.

* In ''Megiddo: The Omega Code 2'', [[BigBad Stone Alexander]] becomes the head of the European Union and quickly turns it into a OneWorldOrder, separating the world into zones. He pressures the US to join this new global community, consistently calling it the North American Zone, which infuriates the President.

* Nepal's latest Constitution went into effect in 2015, dividing the country into seven provinces. As their boundaries were drawn up based on logistical and political convenience rather than historical significance or culture, these provinces only have numbers, not names when they are established in January 2018. As of writing (end of February 2018), only one of them has a proper name--Province No.6, being renamed Karnali.

* ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' has the entire United Kingdom given the pitiful title of [[TropeNamer "Airstrip One,"]] a reference to the Americans referring to it as "an unsinkable aircraft carrier" during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII when the Nazis had overrun most of continental Europe.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' takes place in a coastal city in Eastern Europe (as evidenced by the architecture and abundance of Cyrillic script), known only as City 17. A City 14 is also mentioned by a passer-by., but nobody remembers them any more.

* [[ObviouslyEvil Dr. Regal]] from the ''VideoGame/MegamanBattleNetwork'' series comes from a place called "Nation Z", referred to as an "infamous military country".

* ''VideoGame/XCOMChimeraSquad'' is set in a metropolis designated as City 31 five years after Earth was successfully retaken from the Elders, the alien overlords that gave the city this name. It has since become a symbol of peace and coexistence between humans and the various alien slave races left behind by the Elders after their defeat, but for some reason its new inhabitants still haven't come up with a proper name yet.

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' takes place in a coastal city in Eastern Europe (as evidenced by the architecture and abundance of Cyrillic script), known only as City 17. A City 14 is also mentioned by a passer-by.
* Midgar's sectors in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''. Jesse mentions that the areas on the ground used to have real names, but nobody remembers them any more.
* The world of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars'' since it's been divided into "Blue", "Yellow" and "Red" zones.
** Part of this is because the concept of nation-states had been relegated to history due to the tiberium and subsequent mass movements of refugees trying to flee it, as well as the transnational nature of GDI and Nod.
*** The other part is that it is suggested that there ''are'' administrative divisions, at least in GDI territories, other than the Blue, Yellow and Red zone-division (which is more about what kind of place it is than anything properly administrative - the Red zones being nearly unlivable due to Tiberium poisoning, the Yellow zones being harsh and dangerous, and the Blue zones being almost as the pre-Tiberian world).

** Plus, the numbering doesn't follow any consistent scheme, and if a district becomes so redrawn its geography is warped, well, you can just rename it to fit the new boundaries.

* A lighter example is how the U.S. congressional district names go along the lines of [State]'s [Number] Congressional District - in contrast to the U.K., the country it descended from, which gives each of its 650 parliamentary constituencies unique names. You might think this is the districts are often significantly redrawn after each decennial Census. However, it is quite possible, especially with computers, to draw districts with largely consistent boundaries, as the British do. The real reason for this is because most districts in the US are so gerrymandered that giving an accurate geographic name would be nigh-impossible. Some Americans actually advocate a switch to the named-district system in order to make the gerrymandering more obvious and hopefully discourage it

[[caption-width-right:320:"Japan became the dominion of TheEmpire. It was stripped of its freedom, its rights, and its name. Area 11... the defeated and once proud nation of Japan was rechristened with a mere number."]]

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* In 1793-1794, the town of Lyon in France was renamed "Commune affranchie", or "the liberated town", after the citizens rose against the Jacobins and were defeated.

* The French cities of Paris, Lyon, and Marseilles are divided into municipal ''arrondissements'' (not to be confused with regular ''arrondissements'' which are subdivisions of French departments), all of which are known only by cardinal numbers. All three cities start their numbering with the first arrondissement in the center of the city and spiral outward in sequence (at least at first -- in Marseille's case the numbering reverses direction at the outer arrondissments and Lyon's ordering jumps around at the higher numbers because they were created out of existing ones).

* ''VideoGame/XCOMChimeraSquad'' is set in a metropolis designated as City 31 five years after Earth was successfully retaken from Elders, the alien overlords that gave the city this name. It has since become a symbol of peace and coexistence between humans and the various alien slave races left behind by the Elders after their defeat, but for some reason its new inhabitants still haven't come up with a proper name yet.