Atlanta metro area has country-sounding names (Savannah, Sandy Springs: transplants, middle school, colleges)
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What a hoot of a thread! I enjoyed Aries and B2R's comments especially.
Perhaps if we did like California and Florida and changed the names to Spanish they might sound fancier. Like Boca Raton sounds so much more elegant than Rat's Mouth. San Francisco is sexier than Saint Francis.
Here we go:
Buckhead: Cabeza de Gallo
Peachtree City: Ciudad de Melocotonero
Sandy Springs: Arenoso Artesiano
Stockbridge: Valores Puente
Cumming: Orgasmo
Smyrna: Smyrna
Haha! My old workplace had a filter that wouldn't let you google that 5th town listed. It was a difficult work-around.
I don't find those names particularly remarkable vis a vis other metros.
Miami = Davie, Opa-Locka, Homestead, Hialeah, Plantation.
Dallas = McKinney, Farmer's Branch, Grand Prairie, Mesquite, Grapevine.
Houston = Sugar Land, Deer Park, Friendswood, Humble.
Pittsburgh = Plum, Turtle Creek, Moon Run, Moon.
Los Angeles = Azusa, Rancho Cucamonga, Oxnard, El Segundo.
Texas definitely has some plain and unimaginative city names. "Katy" is the worst.
I've always liked many of the names around the Atlanta area, especially those that I'm assuming allude to the surrounding nature: Woodstock, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek...Buckhead sounds great as well.
Native American words are very prevalent in the Northeast also. One of Jersey City's main roads (maybe THE main road) is Communipaw Ave
The two country names for me in Atlanta are Coweta and Snellville.
Virginia's counties have regal names like Prince George and Prince William, and we have Coweta.
North Carolina's counties are somewhere in the middle: Harnett, Chatham, Edgecombe, Carteret.
I've always thought Buford Hwy was a country name for a road.
Just the "COW" part of Coweta was what I thought sounded country.
I didn't know that Georgia originally had those English-sounding county names.
I was thinking this afternoon that if it was up to me I'd consolidate Georgia's counties down to 100 even.
I know the history of the small-sized counties had to do with farmers bringing the harvest to a close-by trading location or something like that.
I mean many of those counties must struggle with the their finances, my native rural NC county certainly does with a population of 65,000 and property tax rates higher than Raleigh/Wake County.
Back to the nature-sounding metro Atlanta names: Powder Springs, Flowery Branch.
Around Raleigh there are towns named Fuquay-Varina and Lizard Lick. In Eastern NC you have "little Washington" to not be confused with D.C. and Chocowinity.
To the casual observer, it sounds like you have a lot of personal issues with Atlanta, with Georgia and with the South overall.
… And it sounds like the personal issues that you have are manifesting themselves into an irrational infatuation and disappointment with place names in metro Atlanta.
I don't know your exact situation and I could be wrong and I probably may be wrong, but it sounds like your irrational infatuation and disappointment with place names in metro Atlanta is but just a symptom of much larger issues that you may be having with adjusting to moving to a new city and a new state in another part of the country far away from the environment where you grew up at.
It sounds like you moved here from somewhere else (from out-of-state, from another part of the country?) and may be deeply uncomfortable with your new surroundings... And you are taking out your discomfort by using an expressed disappointment with local place names as a not so thinly-veiled cover to indirectly publicly say derisive things about your new home city and state... A new home city and state which you do not seem to be happy about living in right now.
If that is the case... If you are having a significant amount of trouble adjusting to living in a new city and state after a big move across country, then you either need to make arrangements to move back to where you came from (to a place where you might be much more comfortable living) OR you need to make an active effort to become much more involved in your new community here in Atlanta and Georgia.
If you are going to stay in Atlanta and Georgia, then you need to find a way to become integrated into your new community and truly make this your home.
If you are religiously and/or spiritually active then you need to find a place of worship that you feel comfortable in.
If you are interested in sports, you likely need to find a way to become active with the fan club or clubs of teams that you support at each level from high school, to college, to the pros.
You probably also should find and/or identify with one or more causes that are near and dear to your heart and soul and do some volunteering in the community. You really need to find a way to make your new city and state feel like home to you.
Whatever you do, you have got to find something much more constructive to do than just nitpicking place names as a way to issue thinly-veiled insults about your new home city/state because you are homesick and still feel way out of place several months after moving here.
I wish you the best and hope that you can find a way to eventually make this area feel like this is home, should you choose to continue living here.
That's a lot of laptop psychoanalaysis! Don't quit your day job because you are off target.
I've been here for quite a few years. Was driving around the other day, saw an exit sign for Alpharetta and it always makes me chuckle. It's such a strange name. It doesn't even make sense. So one thought led to another and then I started recalling all the funny, country-sounding names here. So I posted about it.
May I ask why you are attacking me because I think some of the names here are odd? You seem to take it very personally. There are some corny sounding names in metro Atlanta that you don't see in other places. But there are plenty of normal names too, as I mentioned in my previous post: Roswell, East Point, College Park, Stone Mountain, Cumberland are all normal sounding. Even snobby East Cobb is a rather normal sounding name - just a geographic designation of that county.
Last edited by KingKanye; 04-18-2019 at 08:25 PM..
Reason: clarity
Texas definitely has some plain and unimaginative city names. "Katy" is the worst.
I've always liked many of the names around the Atlanta area, especially those that I'm assuming allude to the surrounding nature: Woodstock, Sandy Springs, Johns Creek...Buckhead sounds great as well.
I agree. Those names (with the exception of Buckhead) are quite normal names. I like them. They roll off the tongue easily and are not discordant like Snellville or bizarre like Panthersville.
Add Smithtown, Levittown, Sayville, Northport (and the interestingly named East Northport), various places with “Neck” in their name and of course everything that has Native American names.
I said that Native American names are exempted from criticism because those names are from a proud people who were treated terribly by the colonists. Those are the original names of the places before Europeans arrived here. Read my previous posts. Lots of unique Native American names from coast to coast, from south Florida to northern Maine.
Smithtown and Levittown don't sound country because the suffix "-town" in an English word whereas "-ville" is French. Merging English family names with French suffixes sounds odd to my ears, because those towns do not occur in France. That's all i was saying. Northport is like East Point - totally normal English place names.
Sayville actually has a known history on how the name came about - by error or a misunderstanding. True it does have that "forced" English/French merger (English root + French suffix), but it doesn't sound corny to my ears like say Loganville.
Druid Hills is a cool name that I've always liked. Very mysterious. There's a Druid Hill Park in Baltimore too!
Native American words are very prevalent in the Northeast also. One of Jersey City's main roads (maybe THE main road) is Communipaw Ave
The two country names for me in Atlanta are Coweta and Snellville.
Virginia's counties have regal names like Prince George and Prince William, and we have Coweta.
North Carolina's counties are somewhere in the middle: Harnett, Chatham, Edgecombe, Carteret.
I've always thought Buford Hwy was a country name for a road.
As I mentioned above - Native American words get a pass because they were the original inhabitants of the area. And they exist from coast to coast in the various indigenous languages.
They sound odd to non-American ears (say in the UK) but so do indigenous Australian names too. But again the original inhabitants have first dibs on names.
That's a lot of laptop psychoanalaysis! Don't quit your day job because you are off target.
I've been here for quite a few years. Was driving around the other day, saw an exit sign for Alpharetta and it always makes me chuckle. It's such a strange name. It doesn't even make sense. So one thought led to another and then I started recalling all the funny, country-sounding names here. So I posted about it.
May I ask why you are attacking me because I think some of the names here are odd? You seem to take it very personally. There are some corny sounding names in metro Atlanta that you don't see in other places. But there are plenty of normal names too, as I mentioned in my previous post: Roswell, East Point, College Park, Stone Mountain, Cumberland are all normal sounding. Even snobby East Cobb is a rather normal sounding name - just a geographic designation of that county.
Like I said, I could be wrong and probably may be wrong.
I wasn't attacking you and I was not taking your comments personally.
I was just making an observation that your comments seem to reflect that you do not seem to be completely happy living in Atlanta, in Georgia and in the South.
You sound like someone who is unhappy in a relationship (in this case you seem to be the unhappy party in a relationship with Atlanta/Georgia/The South where you are currently living) who may be looking for any and every reason (no matter how seemingly minor) to break off a relationship with someone whom you seem to be clearly annoyed with.
Again, I could be wrong and I probably may be wrong, but you sound like someone who is not happy living here at the moment.
For me personally, I find it kind of difficult to get irritated or even offended by something that is often generally as minor or trivial as place names unless it is a situation where the name is clearly offensive and includes a slur or something along those lines in it.
For me personally, I think that it is much more important to focus on something like the quality-of-life of an area (friendliness of people, amount/frequency of crime, quality of schools, amenities, the history and potential future of an area, etc.) rather than something minor or trivial like a place name.
For me personally, it is the quality-of-life in an area that influences how the name of any particular city/town area sounds, both for better and for worse, and everything in between.
If the quality-of-life of a city/town area is high, then the name of that city/town area likely is going to sound more desirable to me in most cases.
But if the quality-of-life of a city/town area is low or challenged, then the name of that city/town area likely is going to sound less desirable to me in most cases.
There are also places with varying amounts of quality-of-life in between that sound like they are 'middle-of-the-road' or mediocre based on their middling levels of quality-of-life.
Last edited by Born 2 Roll; 04-18-2019 at 10:33 PM..
I think it is just good ol’ anti-Southern Culture bias/prejudice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saintmarks
What a hoot of a thread! I enjoyed Aries and B2R's comments especially.
Perhaps if we did like California and Florida and changed the names to Spanish they might sound fancier. Like Boca Raton sounds so much more elegant than Rat's Mouth. San Francisco is sexier than Saint Francis.
Here we go:
Buckhead: Cabeza de Gallo
Peachtree City: Ciudad de Melocotonero
Sandy Springs: Arenoso Artesiano
Stockbridge: Valores Puente
Cumming: Orgasmo
Smyrna: Smyrna
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saintmarks
The original Georgia parishes established when the colony of Georgia was founded had Church of England names, St. Matthew's, St. George's, St. Philip's, etc. The first 8 counties had several British names as well: Richmond, Effingham, Chatham and Camden are old English place names. The other four were Glynn, Liberty, Wilkes and Burke.
I get why Snellville is not that an attractive of a name, but what is wrong with Coweta? Maybe the southern corruption of it? Great Creek Indian name. Virginia has Accomack and Rappahanock Counties, two odd sounding names with Native American roots. Perusing the Virginia County list I see Dinwiddie, Fluvanna and Goochland Counties. How are those for elegant? it's a toss up.
I love our Georgia names and the history behind them. If some of you had your way, it would sound like a bunch of Cobb County subdivisions. How do you name an Atlanta suburban development? Take two geographical or geological terms and merge them. Woodstream. Forest Cove. Hillgrove. Mountain Park. Lakewood. Rockbridge. Meadowbrook. Glenridge. Dirtstick.
Well, not that last one. But I like it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pinetreelover
My favorite post in a long, long time!!! (Cumming!)
Then there could also be:
John's Creek: Juan Arroyo
Lilburn: Pequeña Quemadura
aries', Saintmarks' and pinetreelover's comments remind me of the controversy that broke out about 15 years ago or so in the Hamilton Mill area of northeastern Gwinnett County.
The newer residents, the newcomers moving into the area, and the real estate developers and boosters of the area wanted the area to be known as "Hamilton Mill", but the longtime residents and natives of the area wanted the area to continue be known by its unique historical name of "Hog Mountain."
In the long run it seems like the "Hamilton Mill" name that newer residents, boosters and developers prefer the area to be known as won out, but their are still meaningful remnants of the historical "Hog Mountain" name in the area... A "Hog Mountain" name that appears to translate to "El Cerdo La Montana" in Spanish... And a historical "Hog Mountain" name that it seems that many of the newcomers to the area and boosters of the area would like to be forgotten.
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Don't quit your day job because you are off target.
