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New Haven is not more famous than Connecticut. If anything Yale might be more famous, but not New Haven.
Agreed. One could argue the Ivy League schools themselves are more famous than the cities they are in. Once you get out of New England the name recognition for places like New Haven drop off significantly, whereas people still know of Connecticut even if they are geographically uninformed. In no way is New Haven more famous than CT. I don’t even know if I’d agree that New Haven has more name recognition than Hartford.
I would submit that for the large majority of people who don't live within a few hundred miles of the Garden State, New Jersey is more famous than any city within. Ask anyone west of the Mississippi if they've heard of New Jersey, and nearly everyone will say yes. Now ask them to name a city within the state. Geography nerds will come up with Trenton, the state capital. A few others might pick Atlantic City, because of its gambling fame. But that's probably about it.
Yep, New Jersey's largest cities are "suburbs" of Philly or NYC. I understand this statement may be insulting to NJ residents but honestly it's the truth.
Giants/Jets play in NJ but most people know them as NY teams.
I believe it's biggest city is 250K or something small like that. Pretty unimpressive for a state with top 10 population. It doesn't have a large metro area to call it's own.
Internationally, major cities are generally going to be more well known. This is a two-way street. For example, most people outside of India know of Mumbai, few people know of Maharashtra. Hell, I'd imagine there are plenty of Americans who know Calgary, but couldn't tell you it's in Alberta.
I think this is more of the rule than the exception in the U.S. The exceptions are going to be places like Texas, Florida, and California - both states that are extremely well known around the world, just like their major cities. LA is one of the better known cities on the planet, but I don't know that it's that much more famous than California. Same for San Francisco. Texas may actually be slightly more well known than Houston or Dallas. And I'd call Miami and Florida pretty close to a wash.
But cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, Nashville, New Orleans, Chicago, etc. are all almost certainly better known outside of the U.S. than the states where they're located. This reflects my experience abroad - most people have at least heard of Boston. More often than not, people don't know Massachusetts.
On the other hand, rural or more wild states like Maine, Vermont, Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Kansas, Oklahoma, etc. are going to be much better known than any city there.
The actual name of the city is New York City, but people call it New York just as often, if not more so. Whereas, if people are talking about the state in which it resides, they'll often say New York State. This never happens with Kansas, Oklahoma, or any other state that has a city with the name of the state plus "City" within its borders.
The name of the city is New York. Your official correspondence, notifications, tax bill, whatever, come from the "City of New York." Fire Department shorthand is "FDNY." Police Dept shorthand is "NYPD," not "NYCPD." "New York City" is not the official name. People add "state" when they're talking about the state and "city" when talking about the city, just to be clear what they mean. Many years ago, before zip codes, postal state abbreviations and postal zones, and when writing and receiving letters was part of everyday life, you might address the envelope to (for example) Miss so-and-so, 215 West 75th Street, New York City. No confusion as to whether that might be somewhere else in New York (state). Later they started writing "New York, N. Y." to be even more certain. In the 1950s, you'd write "New York 23, N. Y." Now you have to write "New York, NY 10023" because no human being is reading it; just a machine and the machine needs the number.
Last edited by missionhill; 07-21-2022 at 09:55 AM..
The only place in Alabama I think has a chance at better name recognition is the town of Talladega. Southern states have a bit more recognition than others due to being used as the butt of a lot of dumb hick jokes, but Mississippi and Alabama get the situation the worst. That said, I do think Alabama is a bit like New York, where there's a higher number of potentially moderately known names than you'd initially think (Buffalo or Montgomery level name recognition).
Wisconsin is a bit on the other end. I think Green Bay might be more known than the state, but overall, I think the state and the cities within are pretty low on the recognition scale (Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay being about the only places with a chance; which is a shame for places like Appleton). Indiana's in a similar situation, but with Gary or Indianapolis being most likely known place (Oddly, I think Kokomo of all places is on that list of possibly knowns).
New Haven is not more famous than Connecticut. If anything Yale might be more famous, but not New Haven.
I'm guessing enough people say "Hartford, Connecticut" rather than just "Hartford" to infer that the two are inextricably linked, the city not famous enough to be spoken on its own without risk of the embarrassing follow-up question, "Where's that?" People seem to dread that follow-up question; otherwise why would people from Millis, Medway, Medfield, Medford, Malden, Melrose and a hundred other towns in eastern Mass be telling everyone they're from Boston?
Agreed. One could argue the Ivy League schools themselves are more famous than the cities they are in. Once you get out of New England the name recognition for places like New Haven drop off significantly, whereas people still know of Connecticut even if they are geographically uninformed. In no way is New Haven more famous than CT. I don’t even know if I’d agree that New Haven has more name recognition than Hartford.
Just one metric: Google gives me about 406M hits for New Haven, CT and about 73M for Hartford (when spelling out "Hartford, Connecticut" for example). Don't forget about the famous New Haven pizza besides Yale too.
But generally speaking - I think Connecticut is more famous than any city within the state, although far from the most famous state. It generally represents calm, boringness, and affluence to the layperson despite the more textured nature of it in reality.
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