US Cities That Changed Their Names, And The Surprising Reasons Why

“Truth or Consequences” was a long-running game show on both radio and television from the 1940s to the 1980s. When it was approaching its 10th anniversary, Ralph Edwards, the show's original host, asked staff to come up with an original way to celebrate this milestone. A suggestion was made to find an American town or city that would be willing to change its name to Truth or Consequences, then do the anniversary broadcast from that location. Several cities applied, but the winning application came from the small resort town of Hot Springs, NM. Originally called Palomas Hot Springs in 1882, the town was named for the area's many mineral hot springs thought to have healing powers. It was quickly shortened to just Hot Springs. Tourism was the main industry, but by 1950 the Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce was looking for a way to separate the town from all the other areas named Hot Springs in the United States. So when the New Mexico State Tourist Bureau informed them that the game show was looking for a town to change its name to Truth or Consequences, they jumped at the idea. A special election was held on March 31, 1950, and the name change passed by a vote of 1,294 to 295. Edwards and the show's crew flew into town, and on April 1, 1950, the game show did its 10th anniversary broadcast from the newly christened Truth or Consequences, NM. The event received a lot of publicity, although because the broadcast was on April Fools' Day, some believed the name change was a joke. Edwards developed a real bond with the New Mexico town. Before his passing in 2005 he returned to Truth or Consequences almost every year for its annual Fiesta, often bringing other celebrities with him. And the town honored the game show host by making April 1 “Ralph Edwards Day.”

Throughout its history, Cincinnati, OH, has been given flattering nicknames such as “Little Paris,” “Athens of the West,” and “Queen City of the West." It was given this last moniker in the early 19th century, when it was the capital of the Northwest Territories and the largest inland port in America. But it was given a less melodious name, Losantiville, when the settlement was built on land opposite the mouth of the Licking River. The name was derived by combining the first letter of the river's name; “os,” which is the Greek word for “mouth”; “anti,” which is Latin for “opposite”; and “ville,” which is French for “town.” According to one legend, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, the first governor of the Northwest Territories, was not happy with this name. He visited the settlement in 1790, and as soon as he stepped foot off the boat, allegedly exclaimed: What an awful name, damn it. Call it Cincinnati! A less colorful version of how the settlement became Cincinnati says the city is named after a group of American Revolution officers called the Society of Cincinnati. These men, who were all civilian soldiers eager to return to their regular lives once the conflict ended, were named after a fifth century BCE Roman soldier named Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, who is said to have turned down the chance to become dictator after saving Rome from tyranny, instead choosing to return to his life as a farmer.

At the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848, Mexico ceded its northern territory to the United States. This land, which included the area that would eventually become Phoenix, AZ, became part of the New Mexico Territory, and all of its residents became US citizens. In 1863, the Arizona Territory was formed out of the western part of New Mexico Territory. Four years later, Civil War veteran Jack Swilling was living in the mining town of Wickenburg when he realized that the land in the Salt River Valley would make excellent land for farming if it only had a water source. He formed the Swilling Irrigation Canal Company, which began digging a canal. By 1868 a small settlement, named Swilling's Mill after its founder, had been built in the valley. The settlement's name changed several times during the first few months of its existence, going from Swilling's Mill to Helling Mill to Mill City. Swilling, who'd been a Confederate soldier, wanted to name the settlement Stonewall, after Stonewall Jackson, while other residents suggested the name Salina. But neither of these suggestions took. Finally, a man named David Duppa suggested the settlement be named Phoenix, as it was built on the ruins of a civilization built by the Indigenous tribes that had previously lived in the valley. Phoenix was officially recognized on May 4, 1868, when the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors formed an election precinct there. An official townsite was selected in October 1870. The town was incorporated in 1881.

For hundreds of years, the land that would eventually be the site of Atlanta, GA, was occupied by Indigenous people known as the Creek. In 1821 the Creek people were forced to cede their land to the US government, and in the following year white settlers began to move into the area. These earliest settlers called the area Canebreak (or Canebrake), but in 1837 Col. Abbott Hall Brisbane, chief engineer of the Western and Atlantic (W&A) Railroad, named the settlement Terminus, because the site marked the end point of the railroad line. However, Terminus was never the settlement's official name; from 1837 to 1842 it was also Deanville and Thrasherville. Other suggested names included Lumpkin (after former Gov. Wilson Lumpkin, who was the president of the W&A Railroad) and Mitchell (after Samuel Mitchell, who had provided the land on which the terminus was established). On December 23, 1842, the town was formally incorporated as Marthasville, named for Lumpkin's daughter Martha Atalanta. A few years later, it was suggested that the name should be changed to one that was both a nod to Lumpkin's daughter as well as to the railroad that had established the young city as a transportation hub in the Southern United States. Which is how, on December 29, 1847, Marthasville was officially incorporated as the city of Atlanta.

Settler Titus Bronson arrived in southwest Michigan in June 1829, and in March 1831 recorded the first plot of land for the village of Bronson with the county's Register of Deeds office. But other settlers didn't like Bronson's beliefs; he was against alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and dancing. In March 1836 the town's name was successfully changed from Bronson to Kalamazoo, which led to Bronson leaving the area. There are conflicting stories about what Kalamazoo means. An atlas from 1823 identifies the river located on the eastern edge of the modern-day city as “Kikalemazo”; this is the first known mention of a word that is similar to Kalamazoo. The most widely accepted story concerning the name's origin is about a man named Fleet Foot, a member of the indigenous Potawatomi people. According to legend, he won his bride by running from the settlement to the river and back again before the water heating in a pot boiled away. This legend is the source of the following translations of Kalamazoo: “boiling pot,” “where the water boils in the pot,” “boiling water,” and "place where the water boils.” Other possible meanings include “mirage,” “reflecting river," and “stones seen in the water from which reflection looks like otters.” Yet another possible meaning of Kalamazoo, “smothered,” comes from a legend about a Native American who was nearly slain in a forest fire.

Until 1848, San Francisco was under the control of first Spain, then Mexico. The first Spanish explorers arrived in San Francisco Bay in 1769 and claimed the nearby land as part of Las Californias Province of New Spain. In 1821, control of Alta California, which included land that would later be known as the site of San Francisco, passed from Spain to Mexico. Englishman William Richardson, who was determined to act as a liaison between Bay Area ranchers and the ships that would anchor in the bay, established his operation at Yerba Buena Cove in 1835. Yerba Buena, which translates to “good herb,” was a plant commonly found in the area. This settlement became known as simply Yerba Buena, and soon was the largest settlement in the Bay Area. The Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, and in July of that year US soldiers claimed Yerba Buena by raising an American flag in the town square. But the settlement's name change from Yerba Buena to San Francisco was apparently for financial reasons, not military ones. In January 1847, shortly after a nearby village attempted to call itself Francisca in an attempt to give it a strong connection to the San Francisco Bay and establish itself as the capital of the region, the mayor of Yerba Buena issued an ordinance that read: WHEREAS, the local name of Yerba Buena, as applied to the settlement or town of San Francisco, is unknown beyond the district; and has been applied from the local name of the cove, on which the town is built: Therefore, to prevent confusion and mistakes in public documents, and that the town may have the advantage of the name given on the public map; IT IS HEREBY ORDAINED, that the name of SAN FRANCISCO shall hereafter be used in all official communications and public documents, or records appertaining to the town. Following this move by San Francisco, the rival village had to settle for being named Benicia. In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo resulted in California becoming a territory of the United States; in 1850 it was admitted to the Union as a state.

In 1824, US President James Monroe invited Gilbert du Motier, AKA the Marquis de Lafayette, to visit the United States. Du Motier was a hero in both the United States and his native France; during the American Revolution he had been the commander of Revolutionary troops at several battles, including the siege of Yorktown, and in France he'd played an important role in the French Revolution. Vermilionville, a small settlement in southwest Louisiana named for a nearby river, was founded in 1824. Jean Mouton, the settlement's founder, originally named it St. Jean du Vermilionville, but that was quickly shortened. When the Marquis de Lafayette came to America that same year, he made a stop in every state; when he was scheduled to come to Louisiana, he decided to came to Vermilionville. The parish the settlement was located in was named Lafayette, after the general. Residents in Vermilionville wanted to change the settlement's name after the general's visit, but were unable to because there was already a town in Louisiana named Lafayette, and at the time there was a rule that a state couldn't have two places with the same name. So Vermilionville had to keep its original name. The original Lafayette, LA, was located in what is known today as the Garden District of New Orleans. When it became a faubourg (neighborhood) of New Orleans after the city was incorporated in 1852, that opened the door for Vermilionville to change its name to Lafayette. However, it would be another 32 years - May 1884 - before the town officially changed its name, 60 years after the Marquis de Lafayette made his visit to Louisiana.

The Seminole Wars, a series of three wars in Florida between the US Army and the Indigenous people known as the Seminoles, took place from 1816 to 1858. During the second Seminole War (1835 to 1842), the US Army built Fort Gatlin to protect settlers from the Seminoles. By 1840, a small settlement had sprung up around the fort, located a few miles south of present-day Orlando, FL. It was named Jernigan, after the family who founded the settlement. The community expanded to the north, and in 1856 its name was changed from Jernigan to Orlando. When incorporated in 1875, Orlando had just 85 residents. There are several stories about how the town got its new name. Two involve Judge James Speer, who was heavily involved in getting Orlando named the county seat. One story says Speer named the town after a man who worked for him; the second suggested he was inspired by Orlando, a character in Shakespeare's play As You Like It. A third possibility is that the town was named after a man who was on his way to Tampa with a load of oxen but perished and was buried in the area. When people saw his grave, they'd say, “There lies Orlando.” The final theory is that the town was named after Orlando Reeves, a soldier who was killed during the Seminole Wars.

Nicknamed “the Athens of America,” Annapolis, located on Chesapeake Bay, is the capital of Maryland as well as the home of the US Naval Academy. Puritan settlers came to the area in 1649, building its original community on the northern shore of the Severn River; this settlement was called Providence. When the settlers later moved to the southern shore of the Severn River, the settlement they built there was known first as Town at Proctor's, then as Town at the Severn. In 1694 it was renamed Anne Arundel's Towne, after the late wife of Lord Baltimore. That same year, Sir Francis Nicholson, the third royal governor of the colony of Maryland, moved the colony's capital from St. Mary's City to Anne Arundel's Towne, then renamed the settlement Annapolis after Princess Anne, the heir to the English crown. Princess Anne became queen in 1702, and in 1708 she issued a charter that made Annapolis a city.

The land on which the city of St. Paul, MN, currently sits was first inhabited by Native Americans. In the 1600s, Mdewankton Dakota of the Sioux tribe came to the area after fleeing their ancestral home near Mille Lacs Lake to escape the advancing Ojibwe. They named their new home Imnizaskadan, or “little white rock.” In 1805, Army officer Zebulon Pike negotiated the transfer of 100,000 acres of Imnizaskadan from the Dakota; this land then became the site of Fort Snelling. In 1837, the US government negotiated a series of treaties with the Dakota that gave the government control of the rest of Imnizaskadan. Fort Snelling was established in 1819 in an attempt to establish American control of the fur trading industry. In 1838 Pierre “Pig's Eye” Parrant, a fur trader turned bootlegger, was the first white person to file a land claim, naming his settlement “Pig's Eye Landing.” Father Lucien Galtier, however, the first Roman Catholic priest in Minnesota, did not approve of this name. After establishing St. Paul's Chapel on the bluffs above the landing, he decided that the settlement's name should be changed to St. Paul, after the church he'd established. Matt Goff, a librarian and archivist, doubted the historical accuracy of the stories about Parrant and whether St. Paul had actually ever been named “Pig's Eye Landing.” In a 2021 article titled “ Not Everything You've Heard About 'Pig's Eye Parrant' Is True," Goff says that although historical evidence proves Parrant did make a land claim in 1838, St. Paul wasn't actually founded until 1840, which was after Parrant had established a settlement about 3 miles south of the area that would become known as downtown St. Paul. It was this settlement that became known as Pig's Eye. So the story of St. Paul once being known as Pig's Eye seems to be nothing more than a story. But this much is historical fact: Minnesota Territory was formally established in 1849, with St. Paul named its capital.

In 1996, Washington Irving's 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” inspired residents of North Tarrytown, a small village in Westchester County, NY, to change the name to Sleepy Hollow. That year General Motors closed its Hudson River plant, which led to the loss of approximately 4,000 jobs in the town. Locals voted to change the village's name to Sleepy Hollow in hope of bringing tourists to the area. The village was officially named North Tarrytown in 1883. Although the short story, which tells the eerie tale of a schoolteacher named Ichabod Crane who encounters a headless horseman on a village road, is fictional, the tale is set in the area around the village, and the author is buried in its Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Nicknamed the “Capital of the Blue Ridge,” Roanoke, VA, is located in Roanoke Valley, which is full of salt mashes - or salt licks. When the first village in the valley was established in 1834, it was named Big Lick after those salt marshes. When Roanoke County was established in 1838, Big Lick had a population of only about 50 people. The railroad came to Roanoke Valley in 1852 but bypassed Big Lick. So the settlement moved down by the railroad tracks, while the original settlement became known as Old Lick. In 1874 the settlement by the tracks was chartered as the Town of Big Lick, but it would retain that name for only a few more years. In 1881 Big Lick became Roanoke, named after the county it was located in. The name Roanoke was derived from the Native American term “Rawrenock,” which referred to the shell beads worn by Indigenous people in the area. Roanoke quickly became a crossroads for what would become the Norfolk and Western Railway, and in 1884 a charter officially established the city of Roanoke.

The area around what would become Concord, NH, was originally inhabited by Abenaki Indigenous people known as the Pennacock. In 1659, when European settlers began to arrive, they named their settlement Penacock, after the Abenaki word pannukog, which meant “crooked place” or “bend in the river.” In 1725 the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued the first land grant for the town of Penacook Plantation. In 1733 the Massachusetts Bay Colony incorporated the town as Rumford, but residents didn't think they should be governed like places in Massachusetts were; indeed, in 1741 Rumford was determined to be not in Massachusetts, but in the Province of New Hampshire. This discovery set off bitter litigation that was not settled until 1762. The town underwent another name change, from Rumford to Concord, in 1765. Concord meant “agreement or harmony between people or groups” and allegedly was chosen because the inhabitants wanted to show they would maintain a good relationship with their Massachusetts neighbors. In 1808 Concord was chosen as the capital of New Hampshire.

Pittsburgh, PA, is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, which combine to form the Ohio River. In February 1754, Indian trader William Trent and British militiamen arrived in the area and began building Fort Prince George. Two months later, 500 French troops led by Commandant Pierre de Contreoeur forced the British to surrender the fort. The French then built a larger fort on the site, which they named Fort Duquesne after the Marquis de Duquesne, who was then the governor general of New France. In August 1758, the French commander at Fort Duquesne learned that British forces were planning to strike the fort. Although an ill-advised strike resulted in the demise of more than 200 British troops, in November, General John Forbes took possession of the remains of Fort Duquesne, which had been burned by the French. The first known reference to the city's name being changed to Pittsburgh came in a letter from Forbes to William Pitt, the prime minister of England. In the letter, dated November 27, 1758, Forbes told Pitt the camp had been renamed in his honor. Forbes spelled the city's name Pittsbourgh. The city was granted a charter on March 16, 1816, but although the Pittsburgh spelling was used in the original document, an apparent printing error caused the city's name to be spelled Pittsburg on the official copies. In 1891 the United States Board on Geographic Names adopted 13 principles in regard to standardizing place names. One of these principles stated that any place name that ended in -burgh should drop the final “h." So Pittsburgh officially became Pittsburg. The board justified their decision by pointing out the city had been spelled without the last “h” on the official copies of the 1816 city charter. However, the board didn't seem to realize that this spelling was a result of a printing error. Companies and organizations that refused to adhere to the board's ruling included the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Gazette, and Pittsburgh Stock Exchange. After about 20 years of public pressure, the board reversed its decision on July 11, 1911, which restored the spelling of the city's name to Pittsburgh.

The settlement that would eventually become Detroit, MI, was founded on July 24, 1701, by French military officer and trader Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. In 1698 he had returned to France to get authorization to establish a French outpost along “le detroit” (the strait) that connected Lake Erie and Lake Huron. The settlement was originally named Fort Pontchartrain du détroit after the French marine minister, Jérôme Phélypeaux Comte de Pontchartrain, and the strait is was located on. In 1707 Cadillac began giving land grants to settlers who wanted to farm the land, but Cadillac was not popular. He left the area when he was named governor of Louisiana in 1710, and with his departure, Pontchartrain's interest in growing the settlement lessened. For years the entire village occupied an area the equivalent of one city block. Detroit remained a French settlement until 1760, when the British took over following the French and Indian War. The settlement's name had changed to Fort Detroit in 1751, and was eventually shortened to Detroit by the British before the small city was named the capital of the Michigan Territory in 1805. The city of Detroit was incorporated by the Michigan territorial governor in 1806.

The first European to live in what would eventually become Boston, MA, was Episcopalian minister William Blaxton. The Indigenous people who lived in the area called it Shawmut, after the peninsula the land was located on, although some of the colonists referred to the area as Trimountaine, because the land appeared to consist of three hills. Blaxton was the lone resident of the Shawmut settlement for several years before inviting a group of Puritans to move from Charlestown, MA - which lacked good sources of water - across the Back Bay to Shawmut in 1630. After agreeing to the move, the colonists decided to change the name of their new home from Shawmut to Boston, after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, where many of the colonists had lived before emigrating to America. This name change, which occurred on either September 16 or 17, 1630, was thought to be the suggestion of Isaac Johnson, who, aside from Gov. John Winthrop, was said to be the most important of theses early colonists. Johnson did not live in Boston long; he perished on September 30, 1630. Blaxton, meanwhile, soon moved away to establish a new settlement on the Rhode Island border. This settlement would be named Blackstone in his honor.

In 1673, fur trader Louis Jolliet and missionary Father Jacques Marquette traveled from the Great Lakes to modern-day Arkansas via the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers, then back up to Lake Michigan via the Illinois and Chicago rivers. At one point during their expedition they paddled up the Des Plaines River and camped on a huge mound Jolliet called Mont Joliet. But it would be another 160 years before settlers arrived in the area. In 1834 a new town sprang up, called Juliet after the daughter of one of the settlement's founders. In 1837 the General Assembly incorporated Juliet as a town, but this charter was repealed just two years later. In 1845 the General Assembly decided to change the town's name to Joliet, in honor of the explorer who had camped on the site some 170 years earlier; in 1852 it was again incorporated as a town.

The history of Albuquerque, NM, dates back thousands of years; the area was inhabited by the Pueblo Indigenous people at least as far back as 2000 BC. The first Spanish explorers arrived at what is now Albuquerque in 1540, when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado came in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. More Spanish immigrants came to the area to establish trading posts, but it was not until 1706 that King Philip of Spain gave a group of colonists permission to build a new villa (city) at the foot of the mountains on the banks of the Rio Grande River. As Joseph Sanchez, the head of the University of New Mexico Spanish Colonial Research Center, explained to newmexiconewsport.com: For the name, at first it was Villa de San Francisco Javier de Alburquerque [for Francisco Fernandez de la Cuervo, the Duke of Alburquerque]. The name was changed to honor the king of Spain, King Philip the Fifth, which led to San Felipe de Rey Alburquerque. It is unclear exactly when or why the first "r" was dropped and the name of the city was changed to simply Albuquerque.

On April 17, 1889, the New Jersey Legislature incorporated part of Union Township as Boiling Springs Township, named for a spring located within its borders. The name was short-lived; on March 28, 1894, Boiling Springs Township became the Borough of East Rutherford due to a referendum passed the day before. This was one of 26 boroughs created in Bergen County, NJ that year, a phenomenon referred to as "Boroughitis." Modern-day East Rutherford may be best known as the home of the NFL's New York Jets and New York Giants; it should not be confused with Rutherford, NJ, which is a neighboring borough in Bergen County.

Home to the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, is located at the head of the Willamette Valley. For centuries it was home to the Chifin band of the Indigenous Kalapuyan people. But that population was decimated by diseases such as smallpox and malaria in the 19th century. In July 1846 Eugene Skinner became the first white settler to file a land claim in the area. He built his cabin on the butte closest to the river, which became known as Skinner's Butte. More settlers followed, and in 1862 the settlement was officially incorporated as Eugene City, named after the first settler. Because the valley suffered from frequent floods, Eugene City earned the unofficial nickname of Skinner's Mudhole. In 1864 the name was changed to the City of Eugene, which was shortened to Eugene in 1889.

Austin, the capital of Texas and home to the main branch of the University of Texas, was originally a tiny frontier settlement of less than half a dozen families called Waterloo. It is unknown why the site was called Waterloo, but Jacob Harrell was the first to settle there (in 1835), eventually building a log stockade on the site of what is the current Congress Avenue Bridge. A couple of years later, Mirabeau B. Lamar, the future president of Texas, visited Harrell's stockade. He contacted the commission that had been put together to find a site for a new capital of the Republic of Texas; after visiting the settlement, the commission told the Texas Congress that Waterloo would be a good site for the new capital. The settlement's name was later changed from Waterloo to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, “the father of Texas” who led early colonization of the area. In 1839 Judge Edwin Waller, who later became Austin's first mayor, resurveyed the settlement and laid out a street plan that is basically the same as the one in the present-day capital. In October of that year, the entire government of the Republic of Texas relocated from Houston to Austin. After Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845, it took two elections to make sure the city remained the capital.

Manchester-by-the-Sea is a small town about 30 miles outside of Boston, MA, located in the area known as the North Shore and originally inhabited by the Indigenous Agawam people. A series of epidemics killed most of the native population by 1619, and about a decade later, colonists from England began to move into the area, The settlement was incorporated as the town of Manchester in 1645. In 1989, nearly 350 years later, the town officially changed its name from Manchester to Manchester-by-the-Sea to avoid being confused with the four other towns in New England named Manchester. The name change passed by a margin of just 33 votes.

Cleveland, OH and Cleveland, Yorkshire, England have been "sister" cities" since 1977. But the former was not named after the latter. Nor do the names have the same origin. The Cleveland in England is named for the Cleveland Hills in the area; its name literally means “cliff-land." Cleveland, OH, meanwhile, was originally called Cleaveland, in honor of the settlement's founder, Moses Cleaveland. It was the first settlement to be built in the Connecticut Western Reserve by the Connecticut Land Company, and Cleaveland headed the survey of the land on which the city would be built. This first survey was completed in 1796, and included just over 200 lots. On January 6, 1931,The Cleveland Advertiser dropped the "a" from the city's name, saying the letter was superfluous. The spelling change caught on, and the city has been known as “Cleveland” ever since.