History

A fun facet of Chinese is that many city names are semantically legible as normal text instead of just as names. 

Shanghai = On the Sea
Beijing = North Capital
Shenzhen = Deep Ditch
Fuzhou = Happy City 

Americans are used to names just being names. What the heck is a "York"?

English town names tell a lot of history. Anything ending in -caster, -cester or -chester was a Roman fort. -bury and -borough are Saxon forts. If it ends in -by it was settled by vikings (by is still the Swedish and Norwegian word for village.) -ford is a river crossing.

Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs)

https://x.com/agraybee/status/1945598318706381192

Beauty matters - Wannabe Polymath. Interested in art, music, history, philosophy and faith.

This is fascinating!! Most of the cities/towns in Connecticut took English names. I’m from Stam-river crossing! I can’t think of it any other way now 😄

Yes, New England was definitely very heavily influenced by British settlers.

Yes! Even the structure of some towns with a central green was influenced by the British. It’s amazing to see it still intact hundreds of years later. Thanks for the lesson this morning!!

That sounds beautiful! Also more conducive to community interaction.

Interesting. 
In Germany almost all cities where build around the church and town/market square. There is always a place where most streets lead to (landmark). 
This was very confusing for me when I lived in the US that the cities were laid out in a grid. I had to use maps to find my way home. But when I was used to it it was really easy to navigate in the town.