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Washington Post

Washington Post

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It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico. Why is so much of America named after foreign countries?

Washington Post
Summary
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76% Informative

Much of the United States of America is, shockingly, named for countries that are not the U.S. It’s not just the Gulf of Mexico , or New Mexico , but many of the names honoring Mexico sit far from the Mexican Cession .

Four of the top six foreign-city names are from the Holy Land : Jerusalem , Antioch , Bethlehem and Hebron .

The top adjectival names felt deeply personal.

In Canada 's Canadian Geographical Names Database , we only saw 44 mostly obscure entities with “ America ” or “ American ” in their name.

The distribution of some names seems obvious. For example, we see the place name Israel more often in states where Judaism is more popular.

Places named after Greece are more common in areas with higher Greek (and Macedonian ) populations.

VR Score

77

Informative language

73

Neutral language

41

Article tone

formal

Language

English

Language complexity

44

Offensive language

not offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

not detected

Time-value

long-living

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