ANSWERS: 2
  • I may be wrong, but I heard that Paris, Texas was named after a person whereas New Orleans was named after a place.
  • 1) Paris, Texas: "The community has no factual knowledge of who named the town, but it is assumed it was named after its French counterpart." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris,_Texas "The Naming of Paris: After Lamar county had been organized and the village of Pinhook had been selected as the location of the "County Site" a committee was appointed to rename the burg and give it a name more in keeping with the capital of a county. History, as handed down in our [Gibbons Poteet's] family, has it that T. R. H. Poteet had the honor of suggesting the name which was adopted--Paris--beautiful Paris--progressive Paris. The tradition is that our people once sojourned in France for a while. There the family was know as "Petite" and that after having migrated to America where schools were scarce and spelling bees few and far between some of the gang forgot how to spell their names with the result that the name finally shows up on the records in its present form. This Frenchy origin is given as the reason why the name Paris suggested itself to T. R. H. Poteet on the occasion of the naming of the city. I am aware that there are other versions as to the naming of Paris but this story has been told in our family ever since the event happened. And I have been told by one of the county clerks that the first record book of the county, now on file in the clerk's office, is an old account book--Poteet and Beauchamp, I believe, furnished the young county by T. R. H. Poteet." Source and further information: http://gen.1starnet.com/lamarhst.htm 2) New Orleans: "Bienville wrote to the Directors of the Company in 1717 that he had discovered a crescent bend in the Mississippi River which he felt was safe from tidal waves and hurricanes and proposed that the new capital of the colony be built there. Permission was granted, and Bienville set off in 1718 to start construction. By 1719, a sufficient number of huts and storage houses had been built that Bienville began moving supplies and troops from Mobile. Following disagreements with the chief engineer of the colony, Le Blond de la Tour, Bienville ordered an assistant engineer, Adrien de Pauger, to draw up plans for the new city in 1720. In 1721, Pauger drew up the eleven-by-seven block rectangle now known as the French Quarter or the Vieux Carre. After moving into his new home on the site of what is now the Custom House, Bienville named the new city "La Nouvelle-Orléans" in honor of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, the Prince Regent of France. New Orleans became the capital of French Louisiana by 1723, during Bienville's 3rd term." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Le_Moyne_de_Bienville Originally, the reference to the city was in this case indirect! 3) "When a major city or province is destroyed during The End Of The World As We Know It, and it gets rebuilt After The End, instead of going back to the original name for it (or naming it something else), it's common practice for the builders to tack on "New" or "Neo" to the original name, probably to show how this incarnation is nothing like the old, destroyed one. If there's still ruins of the old city left, you can bet that the remaining townsfolk will refer to it as "Old"-whatever, as a show of how much they want to forget what happened and move on. Also happens when survivors from a destroyed planet or country resettle somewhere else; in this case, the "New" or "Neo" title is used to describe how the area will be remade into a better version of the old." "Real Life example: New Delhi, India. Right after Katrina hit New Orleans, the Internet started buzzing with jokes about "New New Orleans". Any number of place names in North America are this. New York itself is named after York, England. New Orleans is named after Orleans, France. Etc. And New York was previously called New Amsterdam, after the city in North Holland, The Netherlands. Why they changed it, we can't say. Maybe people just liked it better that way? Because the Duke of York was the guy who took control of the city from the dutch. This is Truth In Television for many places named by colonists, Australia for instance has New South Wales, and lets not forget New Zealand. In Canada, The Province of Quebec was once known as "Nouvelle France/New France", New Brunswick is named after a territory in Germany that was once ruled by the British king, and Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". "Newfoundland", meanwhile, is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Oh, and don't forget about New England in the US. But then, there is a place called Neu Kamerun (new cameroon) in Germany... Naples (Napoli to its actual inhabitants) comes from words Neo Polis, "New City". The name was given by Greek settlers thousands of years ago, and it stuck." "Real-life example: Carthage literally means "new City". The Carthagenians founded a city in the south of Spain that ended up being called Carthago Nova by the romans ("New New City") that was eventually shorted to Cartagena. In the New World a few centuries later a city was founded called Nuevo Cartagena..." Source and further information: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NewNeoCity 4) It looks like *colonists* have the tendency to name cities with the "New" title. Colonists would be people wanting to make "something new"... On the other side, some people just looking for a name could have named a city in honor of a famous model.

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