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catnapspirit t1_iqvqpw9 wrote

Nice. I can confirm "-ville" is bizarrely popular in TN, having moved there recently. Though pronounced "vul" not "vil" more often than not..

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chills1138 t1_iqwgfws wrote

I can confirm pronunciation. I lived in Clarksville for a time. I also noticed the same pronunciation in Alabama when I lived near Daleville. Yes, I was Army.

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cwdawg15 t1_iqwbluj wrote

This is actually a fascinating subject.

The suffixes on many names in the US are European based naming standards abbreviated and shortened. The use of them has something to say about where our country was when these cities were founded.

-ton & -town is British based. -ton is a shorterned -town. Hampton would be the Town of Hamp and it likely had some relationship with another city or person named Hamp or Hamp is an abbreviation of a longer name. -boro is another such English name. It was also common practice to put the type of place at the end in English city names. The name of a river, mountain, creek, woods, so -mont, -port, -wood, -land, -hills was a direct alteration to the naming standards English used to describe what their town was through the name. -mouth would also be the mouth of a river.

-burg is German for castle. Many Germanic cities had small castles that were the banks of their day to protect the cities valueables, so -burg stuck as an informal name for a small city. The areas where these are mapped goes into the Midwest where Germans heavily settled the area.

-ville is very important in American history. It is pervasive throughout the east coast and eastern midwest. Any area with towns settled in the few decades after the success of the American Revolutionary war gave a great deal of praise to France for their assistance. It comes from the name for a French town Ville. So Lawrenceville is Ville Du Lawrence, the Town of Lawrence. It was likely founded by someone with the last name Lawrence, but the Ville came from Americans trying to shed names from Britain, like -ton, and thanking the French for their assistnace. Sadly, because of the linguistic differences between French and English many often take -ville to sound antiquated, substandard, backwards, etc... But it actually has its roots from a very important piece of American history and was to thank the French for their help.

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dimhage t1_iqwwpcy wrote

Wouldn't burg be from the Dutch burg, meaning the same but the Dutch actually owned NYC which was called New Amsterdam at the time? Would make sense as most of the cities ending on burg are spread out around NYC area.

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cwdawg15 t1_iqx2vcu wrote

It’s a good point, but it’s widely used throughout Germany and it was the German settlers that brought it from the coast across most of the Midwest.

-burg does have distant Dutch origins and is used in some Dutch names, but it’s also pervasively used across Germany more than the Dutch use it.

German city names: Hamburg, Strasburg, duiesburg, Ludwigsburg, wurzburg, coburg, Marburg, Wolfsburg, brandenburg, flensburg, Oldenburg, oranienburg, You also get a wide variety of -berg in Germany.

Other common German suffixes are -heim, -feld, -hausen, -stadt, -haven. These are less common in America, but can happen on occassion.

There is a Oostburg Wisconsin and that is a very, very Dutch name and that area was settled by the Dutch. Most of the earlier Dutch settlements were in NY and NJ along the coasts and they don’t frequently use -burg, but there is a decent amount of -berg and berg- that could likely be attributed to the Dutch over Germany.

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[deleted] t1_iqx8kl5 wrote

[deleted]

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cwdawg15 t1_iqx9spc wrote

https://www.unlockyourhistory.com/post/2018/11/08/why-burg-why-berg#:~:text=English%20simply%20translates%20them%20both%20as%20%E2%80%98castle%E2%80%99.%20However%2C,of%20cannons%2C%20when%20old-style%20Burgen%20became%20less%20useful%29.

This explains it quite well and puts it into perfect context how/why it impacts city names.

Also interesting: https://www.caliglobetrotter.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-burg-and-a-schloss/

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BigRedRN t1_iqvznae wrote

Would not have expected Indiana in thr top five for -port

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ilrosewood t1_iqy5fpt wrote

There are way too many -port towns in the middle of the country

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BostonTreesMod t1_iqyfxw9 wrote

Funny enough, due to the Mississippi, thousands of inland tributary rivers and streams are functionally ocean ports. They don't manufacture and ship things out anymore, though.

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Emilbjorn t1_iqwdy3p wrote

Cool, but also reminded me of this: https://xkcd.com/1138/

It would be interesting to see the frequency of those suffixes per county or state basis, to filter out the fact, that there are more cities on the east half of the US.

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BoMcCready OP t1_iqwe61i wrote

Yep, this comic always comes up with maps that look vaguely like population maps :) Randall Munroe actually spoke at Tableau Conference a few years ago, to tie the graph and the comic together!

That's why I included the bar graphs by state! But yes, always a risk when you're mapping cities.

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digit4lmind t1_iqwmway wrote

Maine dominates -land, and yet there’s not a single dot in Maine. Why?

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C4Sidhu t1_iqwvjn1 wrote

What kind of beach are you gonna find in North Dakota?

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LaLiLuLeLo_0 t1_iqy79y3 wrote

Let’s found our own city in ND, we’ll call it Beachport Hills

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Duff_Lite t1_iqxlqor wrote

Does “boro” also include “borough”? I know both are used in Massachusetts. (Judging by the dots, it doesn’t)

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howieinchicago t1_iqy44t3 wrote

Came here to ask the same. Scarborough. ME and many of both varieties in Mass.

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STODracula t1_iqw3daq wrote

Looks for -bury. No -bury. So sad.

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---Default--- t1_iqww6qn wrote

Not sure what your data set is but I'm 99% sure there are no cities that end in "beach" in NH or anywhere in New England for that matter. Hampton Beach in NH is in the city of Hampton.

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BoMcCready OP t1_iqvpf64 wrote

Tool: Tableau

Source: simplemaps.com/data/us-cities

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techfinanceguy t1_iqvzku5 wrote

Looks like Maryland is popular for everything.

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Legoman718 t1_iqwen8s wrote

the difference between -ton and -town name locations is very interesting

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whooo_me t1_iqwj5qt wrote

So we finally have a winner in the eternal Springfield vs Shelbyville contest?

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OutsideCandidate3 t1_iqwrbfe wrote

That's odd. I wonder how you map Wincherstonfieldville, Iowa? /s

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Rocket2112 t1_iqww2xt wrote

Cities named after Indian tribes? Cities in other countries?

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BabaYaga40Thieves t1_iqx0mkl wrote

If “heights” was on here there’d be a huge wash over northeast Ohio

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rjx89 t1_iqxf695 wrote

Is this on a per capita basis? You have New Hampshire as 3rd place under "beach" but according to the data they only have 2 cities with "beach" in the name (Hampton Beach, and Seabrook Beach). Meanwhile California has 22 cities with "beach" in the name and does not appear in the top 5.

edit: In the data it looks like Florida is indeed first for total number of cities with "beach" in the name with 65 total cities and California would be second with 22.

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---Default--- t1_iqyzy6l wrote

Also Hampton Beach and Seabrook Beach are not cities, just beaches.

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CatOfGrey t1_iqy0olr wrote

I was looking for California on these lists, before remembering that Spanish is actually our 'native' language here, and we use 'prefixes'. Many city names with Los/Las ("The") or San/Santa (named after saints).

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jvtrain t1_iqwj4mo wrote

Would be interesting to see what towns are only composed of these suffixes.

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Kaffohrt t1_iqwtb2r wrote

Can someone elaborate on the -park map. Why the line-like arrangement?

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The_Projectionist t1_iqx1gde wrote

If you're in Delaware, it's not a creek. It's called a "crick."

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Khyron_2500 t1_iqx2lyt wrote

I’d like to see this for second words.

Being in the Metro Detroit area now I can think of many.

Heights, Hills, etc.

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GRAWRGER t1_iqx3xzi wrote

"beach" being a suffix for non-coastal (and even non-aquatic) areas. whose idea was that?!

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pspahn t1_iqx5a5x wrote

Including the state borders would be really helpful in determining which dot refers to which city.

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Cause0 t1_iqx6ttm wrote

That one beach in Montana

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Tidusx145 t1_iqxqw82 wrote

Lol I live in a "burg" town in PA. We just call it the burg. Turns out there's a lot of burgs and we were cocky for thinking ours was the king.

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ilrosewood t1_iqy57ma wrote

Now I’m going to have to map all cities that are just prefixes and suffixes.

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BoggeshZahim t1_iqy8i36 wrote

It looks like there are more cities in eastern USA

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Magooose t1_iqz4pll wrote

There is a whole lot of empty in the west.

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joyification t1_iqz0aot wrote

Would be awesome if the x axis was labeled, can't tell if it's by population or number of occurrence

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[deleted] t1_iqz8tne wrote

I love the one -beach in montana/north dakota

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futurebigconcept t1_iqzhrcp wrote

The closest it gets to the west coast is 'Springs' and 'Valley' for Nevada. Hmm, how about those 39M people in California and $2.9B GDP...?

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vortexgenie95 t1_iqzmf1i wrote

where is the key for the bar graph?

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TENTAtheSane t1_iqwb97i wrote

Ngl, this map looks good, but it just seems like a heat map of US population to me. It's a bit hard to compare which suffices are more common in which parts of the country, when it's the same parts that have a bunch of dots for all of them

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BoMcCready OP t1_iqwbdp5 wrote

Yeah, I think that's always a fair critique of maps of places, although I think there are at least a few interesting trends in this one. To me, if it looks like a population map, then the suffix is common but without a distinct regional pattern!

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