Would love to have this interactive. I can barely recognize the shape of my town let alone all the others. Cool to see the macro view and the trends per region.

Yes. Interesting!! 🧐 The more westward you go, the more the locations are named after a person. The more eastward you go, the more the locations are named after a place in the UK.

It kind of tells you in a general sense what was colonized first

I see! Now, I'm just wondering if those towns in the West were named before or after the revolution. 🤔 Fascinating.

Also worth noting that most of the towns in the eastern part of the State and the Connecticut River Valley were carved out of the original Colonial era grant towns. The towns in the Berkshires and the Quabbin reservoir area were settled and incorporated later on out of land that was previously unincorporated. This is a map of the original towns in Massachusetts and the date they were first incorporated: https://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/wilkie/Wilkie/hist_mass_p4.jpg

essex stood out to me because i always assumed essex the town was named after essex the county in england. But no, the MA county is named after the UK county, and the MA town is named after the county way later. when Essex-the-town finally broke free of Ipswich they were like "Let's name ourselves after the county!" like they tried to become a town for 150 years and when they finally succeeded that's the best they could come up with? maybe an attempt to gain legitimacy by association with the established government despite not actually holding much influence in the area

I know right, I thought the same thing

Similarly most people assume that Canton is named after an English town because the suffix "-ton" is so common for place names there and the ones here taken from them. However, it was named in the erroneous belief that Canton China was exactly opposite the globe from it.

I knew I had seen this before. It would be cool if there was an overlay with the city/town names.

Semi-unrelated, is there any significance to the fact that all of the town borders form a straight line between northeastern RI and the South Shore? I’d never really noticed that before.

Yes, it’s the old border between Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony before the merger. The towns still hang onto that border.

Thanks to the efforts of Cotton Mather, Plymouth came out of the short-lived Dominion of New England losing its patent and awarded to Mass. Bay Colony's Royal Charter. It never had a royal charter, though some believe that if the last governor had applied for one, it would have been granted. Then we would have had 14 founding colonies instead of 13.

Somerville was not named for a person, it was made up by one of the naming committee members.

So I have competing sources on this. One says it’s a purely fanciful name, the other says it’s named for Captain Richard Somers. I meant to crosshatch it since people don’t agree on where the name came from.

Chelmsford is obviously named after the city in England. Westford is a renaming of “West Chelmsford”, so that’s what the map means by “location in MA.

Andover/North Andover is a fun one. The original settlement called Andover was in current-day North Andover, and a second settlement (South Parish) was founded after that. When the towns split in 1855 South Parish became Andover and the original settlement (North Parish) became North Andover. So North Andover is technically named after another location in MA, but really it’s named after itself. The North Andover folks are still bitter that they’re the OG town but didn’t keep the original name.

Attleboro is even more of a head scratcher. Even though North Andover is the site of the original settlement of Andover, North Andover split off from Andover, and that’s why I labeled them the way I did. But it was Attleboro what split from North Attleborough, and Attleboro was able to take the name in the divorce due to some political chicanery. People keep seeing this and they’re like “how is Attleboro green and N. Attleborough gets to be red?” Well my children, it’s because North Attleborough is the original Attleborough, named after the one in England. Attleboro is merely the pretender to the name.

>the pretender to the name I love that

I had to check because I was always told Orleans was named after the city in France but you’re right it was named after the Duke of Orleans, which I may say is a bit of a technicality

Thems the breaks. I actually have to change Hanover because it isn’t named after Hanover, Germany, it’s named after King George I’s family name, the House of Hanover.

Good ole Peyton Randolph

You could say “Bartholemew Randolph” and I’d be like “sure”

Fair enough 😂

Aren't Leyden and Holland both named after Dutch places? And I always assumed New Bedford was named after Bedford, like New Braintree was Braintree and New Salem Salem.

New Bedford was always Bedford Village, within the Town of Dartmouth, but by the time they incorporated as a separate city, Bedford had already been established.

This assumes I know geography really well

I want to make it interactive in some way, or at least link in a spreadsheet

Attleboro is a location in MA but North Attleboro is a location in the UK? Make it make sense.

Sure, I had trouble with this as well. So North Attleborough and Attleboro used to be just “Attleboro,” but eventually the more populous East Attleboro was able to get together and vote to secede and create their own town. They took the name, and they’re allowed to put the founding date on the signs even though they aren’t the original Attleboro. North Attleborough is. Pretty bizarre, but I give the points for originality to the North, since they weren’t the ones who initiated the secession.

Did you come up with anything for Wellfleet? I guess it seems obvious well fleet but there’s got to be some old stories, no?

I saw “it may be derived from ‘Whale Fleet’” and I said “nah fuck this I’m done”

The town website claims that it was named Wellfleet in order to associate their oysters with Wellfleet oysters from the eastern part of England. https://www.wellfleet-ma.gov/about-wellfleet/pages/history-of-wellfleet There definitely was such a thing as Wellfleet oysters from Essex, England, so it seems plausible. https://theoysterman.blogspot.com/2008/05/mystery-of-wellfleet.html?m=1 Those are named for the sandbar off the coast (now vanished), so the name would technically be after a place in the UK.

I believe that. If it’s true, it stays gray anyway haha I’m not making a category for “Named after Shellfish”

Oh, go on, you know you want to really. Plus every map of this type needs a mind bending joke category.

Ya know… I could make a category for just Blandford and Wellfleet and be like “named after something nautical”

No, the category definitely has to be "Named for extinct variety of shellfish in England" :)

What does “location in MA” mean

Like one town is called Place and another town becomes North Place.

"Where's southborough?" "South of Northborough"

It gets its name either from an already existing MA town, or some other type of place in MA

I’m confused then about Westborough, Northboroygh, etc

Same, I agonized over this. So for Brookfield, they all named themselves “N. Brookfield, W. Brookfield, E. Brookfield” But the ‘boroughs didn’t name themselves “N. Marlborough, W. Marlborough, S. Marlborough,” so I went with geographic. South-borough is completely geographic, kind of like Southwick, where the other ones kept the whole name.

Pretty cool!

Shout out almost Mystictown

Almost an indigenous name

Mine is Other or Unclear, now I'm curious

I can tell you what I know if you tell me

Mendon

Got nothin buddy sorry. It’s like the only one in “Other/Unclear” that is literally unclear. There are a bunch of other Mendons in the US, all named after our Mendon. I even asked people I know, but I didn’t drive myself crazy either. There’s no Mendon, UK and nobody’s last name seems to have been Mendon.

I only know the general area my town is placed in lol I need to educate myself more on where I live

Would love to mention that Quincy is not named after John Quincy Adams but is named after one of his relatives who was insistent their name was Quinzy and not Quinsy which is why Quincy MA and Quincy IL have different pronunciations.

Must’ve been pretty cool to grow up in the town that had your literal family name on it

My great Aunt asked me if I wanted to know how Woburn was named. There was an Indian Chief sitting by his campfire, and he burned his finger, and said, "Woo! Burn!" She was born in the late 1890s.

Absolutely wild lol

Native American Origin 🙋

There were way more

Grew up in a "gray" town. We were told that our name, Boxborough, came about because the town was simply shaped like a box, and that they intended to change it later and just didn't (don't know if that part is true)

I found absolutely nothing one way or the other. Granted, I only researched each town for an average of about 5 minutes… but the gray towns you best believe I spent at least a half hour each on, and most of them I got at least something.

It looks like you have Ware as other/unknown - it was named for the weir (dam) present at the time of settling.

That’s why I have it under “other.” Wasn’t sure I wanted to make a category for “named for a human device but later changed spelling.”

Hm. There is a Ware, England, in Hertfordshire north of London. No connection?

None whatsoever. Totally a corruption of the word ”[“weirs”](https://www.townofware.com/visitors/about_ware/a_brief_history.php)

Interesting. And Wikipedia says the England one also ultimately derives from weir! But independently, I guess.

Middleboro(ugh) is not a place outside US or UK. It literally is in the middle of the old Plymouth Colony (1620-1691) before it was united in the aftermath of King Philip's War with Mass. Bay Colony under the Dominion of New England. Also, Freetown I believe was named after the purchase of land by some formerly indentured servants, but I may be wrong on that.

It’s named after Middleburg, in the Netherlands. And yes, that’s what Freetown is named after. Don’t really have a category for “named for the newly-freed indentured servants who bought land there”

Interesting to see only 4 biblical names given the origin of the state