Discussion Main / NamingYourColonyWorld

Why is the IAU NameExoWorlds thing not here? It happened only two years ago, but nobody seems to have added it. The website's here: http://nameexoworlds.iau.org/

Removed a big pile of non-planet examples from Real Life sections:

New Non-Planets

• New York, New Zealand and New Caledonia would be Real Life examples of the first variant. Great Britain too, if you don't restrict it to just "New".
  • To be precise Brittainy ("Little Britain") was named after Britannia, which then became "Great" Britain.
  • New York was once New Amsterdam was once New Netherland (though New York was apparently named for the Duke of York rather than York itself)
• New South Wales is also another Real Life version of this, with perhaps slightly more creativity (it's not just New, it's also South!). See here for Mitchell And Webb's take on how it got the name.
  • New North Wales, meanwhile, is an outdated name for Northern Quebec.
• New Galice was one of the first Spanish colonies acquired by the first conquistadors. It was eventually split into the states of Jalisco and Nayarit.
• Also New Spain (now Mexico—not to be confused with New Mexico, the Spanish colonial empire also included New Granada); New England (which includes New Hampshire); New France (now Quebec); New Sweden (parts of modern Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. If you throw in Latin, there's Nova Scotia ("New Scotland"—not to be confused with the French dependency of New Caledonia) with its neighboring province of New Brunswick (named for the German state originally ruled by England's Hanoverian dynasty). Really, this trope is just Truth in Television.
  • Also New Madrid, which is in Missouri and has a faultline that produced a rather nasty earthquake named after it.
  • This tradition started quite early in Spain — the city of Cartagena was named by the Romans Carthago Nova, "New Carthage".
    • That was because the Carthaginians before them had named both cities the same way: Qart Hadash,*
      Hebrew-speakers: Yes, this is more or less "Kirya Hadash". Phoenician and Hebrew are very similar.
      which coincidentally means "New City". The Romans were a lot more practical.

Non-Planets Named For Places

• Birmingham, England and Birmingham, AL.
• The pilgrims of England left Plymouth and founded a new colony in the Americas and called it Plymouth.
  • "They set off from Plymouth and landed in...Plymouth, how lucky is that?."
• Presumably unbeknownst to most of its inhabitants, the American city of Baltimore is obliquely named after a small town in Ireland. Specifically, it was named after the second Baron Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert, who was the founder and first governor of the colony of Maryland.
  • Baltimore City also includes an area called Canton.
• Similarly, Boston is named after the town in England where the original settlers were from.
• Washington DC was (indirectly) named for a small town in North East England.
• There are ten Dublins in the US, though only the ones in Ohio and California have more than a couple of thousand people.
• The proliferation of Old World names in the New World is why "London, England" Syndrome exists, but it gets a bit ridiculous when the namesakes are a fraction the size and prominence of the original.
  • But it is quite hilarious when the namesakes are multiple powers in size and prominence more than the original. Seriously, when was the last time you heard of Boston, England? (Inhabitants of Lincolnshire and the wider East Midlands, please keep to yourselves.)
    • Basically, this is similar to Adaptation Displacement.
• Compare Guadalajara, Spain, an old small city that barely reaches the hundred thousand people, with Guadalajara, Mexico, a bustling metropolis already reaching the 5,000,000 people. The latter was named after the hometown of Nuño de Guzmán, who was in charge of the settling expedition.
• This even occurs within countries — for example, there are over 20 cities and townships in the US named Concord. Meaning almost half of the lower 48 has a place named Concord. There's even a New Concord (in Ohio). There are also seven Springfields, two within less than five hours' drive of each other (Illinois and Missouri, the one in Illinois being the capital of the state). This is why Springfield is such an unhelpful and therefore useful name for a fictional location.
• Portland, Oregon is named after Portland, Maine. While the original city has a population of over 60,000 and is the largest and most important city in Maine, the city in Oregon has far surpassed its namesake in size (over 500,000 people), recognition and importance.
  • And had a coin toss gone differently, Oregon's largest city would be named after Boston instead. One of the city's founders was from Portland, Maine, and the other was from Boston, and each wanted the area named for his hometown. The penny used to decide this is now on display in the Oregon Historical Society Museum.
• In general, many places in the US and Canada were named after locations in the original settlers' home region. Since settlers tended to migrate in clusters, this frequently means that names come in clusters. For instance, since Michigan was primarily settled by people from Upstate New York, Michigan has a large number of places named after places in Upstate New York: among other things, the state capital Lansing is named after the town of Lansing in Tompkins County; the cities of Rochester and Troy in Oakland County were settled by people from the fairly-famous Rochester and Troy, NY; and Genessee County, MI, which contains Flint, is named after Genessee County, NY, which in turn was named after the Genesee River Valley running through it.

Non-Planets Named The Same

• What distinguishes this trope from examples like New York or Plymouth is that the name similarities are not because one place is named after another, but because they were originally given the same name, either because someone was unaware the name was already taken, because both examples were a tribute to someone, or because the name has a literal meaning that's applicable in both cases. If humanity's capacity for originality remains consistent after it spreads to the stars, this will likely continue after enough planets are discovered.
  • Interestingly, avoiding this is one of the reasons why the IAU refuses to name most planets that are discovered, instead designating them (star name) + (lower case letter). It's also why they don't bother to name most stars.
• In one example, Alexander The Great famously went around naming several new cities (as well as a few old ones) after himself. Of these Alexandria, Egypt is by far the most famous, though there are also Alexandrias in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan (although centuries of language change have left that one as "Kandahar", which you may have heard of).

  • This included Alexandria Eschate ("Alexandria The Furthest") in Central Asia. He also named cities after his lover Hephastion and his horse Bucephalus.

• Point Arena, California and Punta Arenas, Argentina have the same name (meaning Sandy Point), but the similarity is completely coincidental.
• Vancouver, British Columbia and Vancouver, Washington are both named after the explorer George Vancouver, but not after one another.
• The District of Columbia and the country of Colombia are both named after Christopher Columbus, but were derived independently of one another.
• Sao Paulo (the largest city in Brazil) and St. Paul (the capital of Minnesota) are both named after Paul of Tarsus.

Non-Planet PR Names

• Mt Hood Oregon is named after a British Admiral
• Mt Everest is named after The Spymaster who paid the salery of the British undercover explorer who found it. Sherpas rather find that eccentric and in their own tongue it is named after a Hindu goddess.

Move the two 'examples' of planets named the same to mythology (pandora) or symbolic (miranda is probably a reference to the brave new world quote from the tempest).

These two examples of 'did not do the research' are not applicable as they either DID do the research, which is what this subtrope assumes, or they didn't and they named the planets due to the reasons above. Either way something doesn't make sense.

The real life examples are not planets and thus should not be in this trope at all.

Cut all the "Examples of Planets named for propaganda purposes," since, despite being Real Life, none of these are planets.

• Greenland. Nothing further need be said.
• Many of the original 13 colonies were named to curry favor with the monarch or important nobles:
  • Virginia was named after The Virgin Queen Elizabeth I of England.
  • Maryland was named after Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I.
  • Charles later got his own colony in the form of Carolina, which was later split into North Carolina and South Carolina.
  • New York was named after King Charles II's brother, the Duke of York, who later became James II.
  • Pennsylvania was originally just supposed to be "Sylvania," but "Penn"—after William Penn's father (confusingly, also named William), a noted admiral—was added to the beginning at Charles II's insistence.
  • Georgia was named after George II.
  • Several colonial cities were similarly named (e.g. both Jamestown and Williamsburg, Virginia). Pittsburgh was named after William Pitt The Elder, who at the time was Secretary of State for the Southern Department (the minister responsible for the colonies) and Leader of the House of Commons; he would later become Prime Minister.
• The Philippines were given their name to gain favor with Philip I of Spain. You know, the guy with the Spanish Armada and the trouble with Queen Elizabeth.