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 Say "romania" and most people (or at least people with some knowledge of geography) will think about a country in the south-eastern part of europe. but a small number of americans will probably first think of a little village located in somerset county. you heard it here, folks: apparently there's a village in the US that bears our country's beloved name. unfortunately google resources on this topic are very scarce. we know that romania is located in somerset county in the state of pennsylvania. a webpage about the history of bedford and somerset counties had this to say about the place: "The little village of Romania, on the Salisbury railroad, near the Shaw mines, was laid out by Peter Myers some years in advance of the building of the railroad" if you want to see this for yourself click here for a map on yahoo maps or here for one on mapquest (or just enter "romania, pa" on one of these sites). so there you have it, folks. there are many, many (and i really mean many) cities in the US with international, easy to recognize names. if you have a couple of hours to kill (which we always have here at the association) you can always spend some quality time on yahoo maps or mapquest looking for cities with international-sounding names in the us. what we did is checked for cities bearing names of countries or capitals of the world. yes, folks, there are lots of those on american soil, testimony to the diverse populations that came from all corners of the world and made america their home (phew, sounds like a cheesy middle school book). so let's see now. besides romania, there's a town in louisiana called transylvania. but that's not all - there's even a county in north carolina with the same name, and even transy university. a quick search on yahoo maps also reveals the cities of banat (MI), danube (MN) and carpathian peak (AK). there are many more american cities with names of countries and capitals of europe. for some reasons there are no less than 18 cities in america with the name of macedonia, 17 cities with the name of denmark, 14 with the name of norway and 11 with the name of malta. other popular european countries in the US include germany (5 cities with this name on american soil), ireland (7 cities), holland (6 cities), poland (7 cities) and sweden (7 cities). that's not all, though: a search on yahoo maps will yield one or more american cities with the following names: andorra, belgium, england, finland, france, greece, hungary, iceland, italy, monaco, netherlands, russia, san marino, spain, switzerland, vatican and even albania. the following european capitals can also be found in the US: wien, brussels, sofia, prague, copenhagen, london, paris, berlin, athens, budapest, dublin, riga, rome, amsterdam, hague, oslo, warsaw, lisbon, moskow, belgrade, madrid, stockholm and bern. that's all good, you'll say, but what about other continents? sure, we have data about those too. american cities with asian-inspired names include: armenia, burma, china, india, israel, japan, korea, lebanon, syria, turkey, teheran, jerusalem, manila and damascus. african-inspired names of cities in america include: algeria, angola, chad, congo, egypt, guinea, liberia, morocco, sudan, togo, cairo, tripoli, pretoria, capetown and tunis. the rest of the continents are also represented. there are cities with names such as canada, cuba, grenada, trinidad, honduras, jamaica, mexico, panama, samoa, bolivia, brazil, peru, buenos aires, la paz, bogota, lima and montevideo. phew! of course, there's a city in tennessee called america, and there's even a city called earth in texas. US world domination is complete. and if you think that's a lot, consider the following: we only looked for cities with names of countries (checked for all), or of capital cities of the world (checked for most of them); there are probably many more cities in the world that are not capitals and have counterparts with the same name on american soil. furthermore, you can usually find more than one city with the same name in america: there are no less than 24 US cities with the name of athens, for example. so this is it, folks, that's america for you: a bunch of people who came from all corners of the world to check things out and decided to stay. not bad. |
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