Why are so many American and Australian places named after places in Europe? Could they just not be bothered to think up new names?
by 
lady fuschia
ANSWERS: 4
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I think they wanted some level of familiarity. If you are in a new land where all is strange, some elements of familiarity will make your now home seem more homely. Soldiers in the trenches in WW1 used to name bits of trenches after London streets. I think this is the same sort of thing. Where all is strange and frightening, you want to hag on to somewhere familiar. Remember that what is familiar, friendly and safe countryside now was a terrifying howling wilderness populated by strange and savege (their view) people when they arrived. Other motives: to suck up to sponsors (the York in New York is the Duke of York, the King's brother, not the city) or to encourage more people to come from the old home town.
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For the same reason you probably have the same name as someone your parents knew. We look for the familiar, we re-use the same names, etc. If you want unique place names, look in Oklahoma, where there are a lot of "new" names from Indian words.
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In some cases it's paying tribute to the original. Just like if you named your baby after your mother, or father. Or like when an old song is remade, it's not that the bands couldn't come up with their own ideas.
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I can speak from my knowledge of my local history. I live in a section of the United States known as New England. (That tells you something, eh?) The towns and places around where I live all have either American Indian names or English names. Cohasset is the town I grew up in. The Quonnahasset Indian word Cohasset means "Rocky Place by the Shore." As you travel south from Cohasset, you run into Scituate (Indian), Marshfield (English), Duxbury (English), Pembroke (English), Kingston (English), Plymouth (English), Sagamore (Indian), Bourne (Named after the Englishman Jonathan Bourne), Sandwich (English), Falmouth, Hyannis, Yarmouth, etc. In addition, the state names around here are New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, all English names. As a matter of interest, I have also noted during my travels into Eastern Canada, that it is the same. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia (New Scotland), Prince Edward Island. And the town names as you go up the coastal highway look like they all fell off of an English map!
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