Many American cities are named after American political figures (e.g., Washington, Lincoln, and Houston) after Christian religious figures (e.g., San Jose, San Diego, and San Antonio), English political figures (e.g., Baltimore and Raleigh), and other people (e.g., Columbus). But what is the largest American city named, directly or indirectly, after an ancient Roman political leader?
I also suspect that this city’s namesake is also the earliest-living person after whom a large (top 100) American city was named.
UPDATE: My suspicion in the last paragraph was mistaken, because it turns out the answer to my question is different from (and more interesting than) I first thought. Check out the comment thread for the initial answer from many people — the one I had thought of — and then what now strikes me as the correct answer from a few others. And if that is indeed the correct answer, then congratulations to Abe Delnore for being the first to spot this.
Alex says:
Cincinnati
September 30, 2011, 4:45 pmMichael Fisk says:
Augusta, Georgia, possibly?
September 30, 2011, 4:45 pmRobbo says:
Cincinnati?
September 30, 2011, 4:48 pmCornelius J. Katt says:
Cincinnati was the first to come to mind.
September 30, 2011, 4:49 pmLurker says:
Cincinnati?
September 30, 2011, 4:50 pmDoug says:
Cincinnati.
September 30, 2011, 4:53 pmRoop Vijayan says:
Cincinnati, Ohio. Named after (maybe indirectly) Cincinnatus.
September 30, 2011, 4:53 pmhitchcock says:
Gotta be Cincinnati.
September 30, 2011, 4:53 pmbeetle says:
Cincinnati, maybe?
edit: darn, beat to the punch
September 30, 2011, 4:54 pmBill Barcikowski says:
I’m going with Cincinnati.
September 30, 2011, 4:54 pmAdam Baum says:
Cincinnati?
September 30, 2011, 4:54 pmWes says:
I am going with Cincinnati.
September 30, 2011, 4:54 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Cincinnati? After Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519 BC – 430 BC).
September 30, 2011, 4:54 pmGMUSL Alum '07 says:
Cincinnati? (After Cincinnatus)
September 30, 2011, 4:54 pmSarcastro says:
[Cincinnati
EDIT: Sigh. Everyone is faster than me!
Listening to a Byzantine History podcast.
September 30, 2011, 4:56 pmUS got anything of that origin? I think we don't have a Constantinople. Heraclitopolis soudns too dirty...]
SteveL says:
darn, not fast enough
September 30, 2011, 4:56 pmHizouse says:
Cincinnati, after the famous general who left his plow in the field to serve his country, then voluntarily came back to it.
September 30, 2011, 4:58 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
Dang, EV, keep making ‘em this easy and we’ll have to start calling you “EZ.”
September 30, 2011, 5:01 pmTK says:
Just scanned the list of 100 largest cities in the U.S., and nothing jumps out. Would Corpus Christi count?
By punching in random names in Google Maps, I also found:
Cicero, IL
Brutus, VA
Caesar, MS
—> Apparently Cincinnati is the winner and I am an ignoramus.
September 30, 2011, 5:01 pmPerseus says:
The city whose name was given in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati (Washington was its first president).
September 30, 2011, 5:03 pmht4 says:
I read once that Cincinnati was named for GW, who was once known as the American Cincinnatus… for the obvious parallels. In my view, GW’s greatest “accomplishment” was not in the revolution or during his time as Presdient. It was his retirement from government.
September 30, 2011, 5:05 pmPine_Tree says:
Cincinnati?
September 30, 2011, 5:06 pmAndyK says:
Now you’re just arguing over what it means to be “named after” someone.
Definitely Cincinnati.
September 30, 2011, 5:09 pmGJ says:
Cincinnati
Augusta was named by General James Oglethorpe, founder of the George Colony in honor of Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the Princess of Waters, daughter-in-law of King George II of Great Britain and mother of King George III of Great Britain
September 30, 2011, 5:16 pmCincinnatian says:
I think Cincy is what EV is going for, but I think it fails the “named after” test, if it were stated in those terms. However, because EV stated it as being made after “directly or indirectly” in the OP, it qualifies.
As I understand it, Cincy was renamed (from its previous name, Losantiville) in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, who were in turn named for Cincinnatus. The group’s members included both Washington and Ohio territorial governor Arthur St. Clair, who did the renaming. The plural use for the city’s name further confirms that the name reflects the group, not the Roman person.
Compare: America was named for Amerigo Vespucci. Since then, thousands of groups and companies are named after the country — American League, American Legion, American Airlines, etc. Would we say that American Airlines is named after Vespucci? I suppose one could say that it was indirectly named after him, and it would meet that looser standard, but it still wouldn’t meet a true “named after” test.
September 30, 2011, 5:17 pmElemenope says:
I’m feeling pretty good about having guessed Cincinnati before I read the comments. The strange part is that the trivia knowledge necessary (Washington and the Society of the Cincinnati) to reliably induce the answer I happen to know, randomly, from a video game.
September 30, 2011, 5:18 pmSyd Henderson says:
Cincinnati, unless St. Joseph had a political career we don’t know about.
September 30, 2011, 5:18 pmZach says:
Sheboygan?
September 30, 2011, 5:22 pmMike says:
Does Caesar’s Palace count?
September 30, 2011, 5:24 pmThaddeus says:
America’s Queen City, Cincinnati, named for 5th-6th Century BC leader of the Roman Republic, Cincinnatus.
September 30, 2011, 5:36 pmAbe Delnore says:
(Apologies if this double posts–I’m having formatting trouble.)
It is clear Professor Volokh intended Cincinnati to be the right answer, but I submit that he was too clever by including “indirectly.” The correct answer is New Orleans.
First, bear in mind that New Orleans is a more populous city than Cincinnati.
Now let’s look at the origins of the cities’ names.
New Orleans is named after the French city of Orléans, France, which is simply a modern form of city’s Latin name Aurelianum. Aurelianum is named after the Emperor Aurelian.
Aurelian > Aurelianum/Orléans > New Orleans.
Cincinnati’s name has been explained above. It is named for the Society of the Cincinnati. They took their name from the dictator Cincinnatus.
Cincinnatus > Society of the Cincinnati > Cincinnati
Since New Orléans is bigger, it wins. New Orleans derives its name from an ancient Roman political leader just as directly or indirectly as Cincinnati does.
(It is perhaps important to note that Orléans is not named after Aurelianum; Orléans is Aurelianum.)
September 30, 2011, 5:48 pmalkali says:
New Orleans derives its name from the French Orleans, the name of which is a variation of the Roman emperor Aurelian, who rebuilt that city. NOLA is substantially larger than Cincinnati.
[Edit: Curses! I see that I was trumped by Abe Delnore.]
September 30, 2011, 5:53 pmalkali says:
As to this:
I think Cincinnati is the right answer for this question.
I understand that there is some possibility that the name “Memphis” derives from the name of Menes, a pharaoh who lived c. 3000 BC, but that it is more likely that the name has some other derivation.
The runner-up would presumably be either Santa Ana (the mother of the virgin Mary and therefore grandmother to Jesus) or San Jose (Joseph, father of Jesus).
September 30, 2011, 6:16 pmSasha Volokh says:
I agree with alkali and Abe Delmore that New Orleans is a better answer than Cincinnati.
September 30, 2011, 7:10 pmJ Nevard says:
I’m guessing Deus Ex.. interesting source of that sort of thing.
September 30, 2011, 7:27 pmFda says:
I had thought to answer Cincinnati but, after reading the replies, would count that as incorrect. New Orleans is the better answer. Way to go, Abe!
September 30, 2011, 8:01 pmJames Fulford says:
Well, if Cincinnati were named after Cincinnatus, rather than after George Washington, the Cincinnatus of his day, then I’d say Cincinnati.
If you want a city named indirectly after a Roman figure, I pick Jersey City, named, like the State of New Jersey, after the Bailiwick of Jersey in the Channel Islands, which had the original name of Caesarea, named after Julius Caesar.(Credit to Tristan Jones who pointed this out in his book Adrift, in which he was explaining it to some Italian-American dockworkers.)
September 30, 2011, 8:22 pmDyspeptic Curmudgeon says:
It’s already been listed: Cicero.
Direct name, no variation….
Then again, maybe General Pulaski was a Roman?
September 30, 2011, 8:30 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Actually, post-Katrina it’s only slightly larger than Cincinnati.
September 30, 2011, 8:46 pmAntithetical says:
Just to change things up, what about Rome, GA? Romulus would easily win the earliest living person aspect, but I am not sure if A) its actually named after Romulus or B) its even in the same league sizewise as some of the other possibilities.
September 30, 2011, 8:48 pmBrett Turner says:
If EV means New Orleans, it is clearly not the city named after the “earliest-living person,” as Cincinnatus lived some 700 years before Aurelian (200s AD vs. 400-500s BC).
With regard to Rome, GA, it might be asked whether Romulus was an actual living person. His Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus) states that his father was either Mars or Hercules, which would seem to place him more in the category of myth than history.
September 30, 2011, 9:02 pmJeffrey Techentin says:
This. The Cincinnatus of the West. Always wondered how we went from Cincinnatus to Cincinnati, maybe the comment above on the society explains it. But any day we get to discuss and remember Cincinnatus is a good day.
September 30, 2011, 9:10 pmJonathan says:
Regarding New Orleans: the city was named after Philippe d’Orléans, at the time (1718) the regent of France, not after the French city of Orléans, although I suppose “indirectly” would still cover it. (Just as New York was named after the Duke of York, later James II – it was not settled by people from the City of York, or named for an admirer of that place, etc.)
September 30, 2011, 9:39 pmChris says:
I suppose St. Augustine, Florida is literally too little, too late?
September 30, 2011, 9:54 pmThe_Awful_Truth says:
Would Solon, OH be the American city named after the earliest living person we know actually existed (as opposed to Rome/Romulus)?
Solon’s not Roman obviously.
September 30, 2011, 9:54 pmBuck Turgidson says:
What? No one mentioned Philadelphia? It may be a tenuous connection, but it should at least be mentioned. It’s larger than both Cincinnati and NOLA, it was founded substantially earlier than either of them (the only one of the three in the original colonies). Where it loses is in the dates of the living prototype. The Aurelian family has been prominent in Rome since at least 3rd century BCE (Gaius Aurelius, although the city was likely named after one of his later relatives–much later!). Cincinnatus is even older–5th century BCE. Philadelphus was merely the Bishop of Byzantium in 3rd century CE (in case anyone misses this point–Byzantium is Rome). And there is no evidence of any direct connection between the erstwhile bishop and the City of Brotherly Love–for all we know, Penn picked up the name directly from Greek, bypassing any Roman predecessors.
September 30, 2011, 10:03 pmBuck Turgidson says:
As I just mentioned above, the family became prominent late in 3rd century BCE, so only about 250 years after Cincinnatus, not 700. Of course, Gaius was merely a consul and no match for Marcus Aurelius, but what can you do–they are, after all, family (of Aurelia). And who knows when the earliest Aurelians lived in Rome!
September 30, 2011, 10:08 pmTomPaine4 says:
Alexandria, VA. Not Roman, obviously. Hoping for second place in the “oldest” category, after Memphis.
September 30, 2011, 10:10 pmAbe Delnore says:
The thing is, we know that Orleans was named after Aurelian specifically, who as alkali points out rebuilt the city in the third century AD. Despite what you might expect, Aurelian (Lucius Domitius Aurelianus Augustus) was not a member of the gens Aurelia. A fourth-century historian confusingly named Aurelius Victor says that Aurelian’s name came from the family’s landlord, who did claim descent from that ancient gens. Alternatively, Aurelian may simply have appropriated the name to associate himself with the well-regarded Marcus Aurelius, who ruled about a century earlier. Aurelien himself, like nearly all emperors of the third-century crisis (which he ended), was a career soldier of common origins born in an undistinguished province.
If you want a place named after an unknown member of the gens Aurelia, try Orly.
To come full circle, my great-grandfather’s given name was George Washington, but he was no relation to the Cincinnatus of the West.
October 1, 2011, 12:08 amjkl says:
San Antonio. Larger and Antonio ( not the saint was a political leader)Marc Anthony( not the singer)And there is the same relation between them than between New Orleans and Marcus Aurelius.None, because nobody was aware of that, they named it for the former reigning house of France and not the roman emperor
asked whether Romulus was an actual living person.
October 1, 2011, 12:29 amAlexander was son of Zeus and Caesar of Venus but still were actual living person
Roma was named for Remo his brother . But were offsprings of the albian king. Raised by a prostitute , Acca Laurentia,called by peasants the she-wolf.
Eric Jablow says:
New York State has the town Seneca Falls. Probably, it was named for the Seneca Indian tribe, but was the tribe named for Seneca the Elder? Born in 54 B.C., he’s probably too late for this question.
October 1, 2011, 12:58 amdr says:
North Adams, Massachusetts.
October 1, 2011, 1:07 amSyd Henderson says:
San Antonio isn’t named after the ancient saint but for St. Anthony of Padua, who lived in the 13th century. He was likely named after the earlier saint, but if we allow that, we also have to allow St. Louis and Louisville, because Louis IX and Louis XVI were named indirectly after Clovis I, and that way lies madness. (San Diego is named after a 15th Century saint who I don’t think has any ancient connections.)
October 1, 2011, 4:10 amSyd Henderson says:
I have another candidate. Los Angeles is named after the Virgin Mary. It is a short form of “The village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels.” Okay, she wasn’t exactly a political leader at the time…
October 1, 2011, 4:15 amJody Neel says:
San Diego is named after a 15th Century saint who I don’t think has any ancient connections.
But Diego is just a variation on James…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_(name)
Hence also why the Saint James pilgrimage ends in Santiago…
October 1, 2011, 8:33 amkarrde says:
The city of Romulus, MI is named directly after Romulus. (Though he might be mythological, not historical…)
However, with a population under 25000, it isn’t large enough to be in the top-100-population cities in the US.
October 1, 2011, 10:51 amkarrde says:
Byzantium/Constantinople is now known as Istanbul. It was the center of the Eastern Roman Empire after the split between Eastern and Western Empire, so it could be called Rome v2.0. But Rome is in Italy and Byzantium was on the Bosporus.
October 1, 2011, 10:56 amNow That’s Good Trivia says:
[...] Burt Likko on October 1, 2011 Eugene Volokh asks a trivia question I wish I’d have thought of. And gets a better answer than he had come up with on his own. Burt Likko is the pseudonym of [...]
October 1, 2011, 11:52 amarbitrary aardvark says:
if the category were italy instead of rome, the answer might be different.
October 1, 2011, 1:21 pmJoe (not that one) says:
San Diego is named after a 15th Century saint who I don’t think has any ancient connections.
You’re crazy. No one knows what “San Diego” even means. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.
October 1, 2011, 3:42 pmlatinist says:
“Philadelphus was merely the Bishop of Byzantium in 3rd century CE (in case anyone misses this point–Byzantium is Rome). And there is no evidence of any direct connection between the erstwhile bishop and the City of Brotherly Love”
William Penn was probably just thinking of the Greek meaning, and maybe the ancient cities with that name — but the names of those cities, of course, go back NOT to a Byzantine bishop (they’re much too old), but to Ptolemy Philadelphos, Alexander’s successor in Egypt, in no way any sort of Roman. Not the sort of connection modern Philadelphians like to stress, as Ptolemy’s “brotherly love” involved marrying his sister.
October 1, 2011, 4:01 pmgullyborg says:
I am going to found a new city and call it Australopithecus.
October 1, 2011, 4:57 pmRobert says:
Funny, my mind ran immediately to Seneca too. Isn’t “Seneca the Elder” redundant? Or was there a Seneca, Jr. and a Juventus, Sr.?
October 1, 2011, 5:55 pmAmphipolis says:
Pittsburgh was named after William Pitt (the Elder), Earl of Chatham and architect of the British Empire.
Albuquerque was named after the Duke of Albuquerque, a viceroy of New Spain.
October 1, 2011, 8:28 pmDr. Weevil says:
“Seneca the Elder” is not redundant. There were two, father and son. The Elder Seneca (54 B.C. – A. D. 39) wrote on ancient oratory, quoting the wittiest lines of all the orators he had personally seen and heard. His son, the Younger Seneca (ca. 4 B.C. – A.D. 65) is the more famous of the two: he wrote letters and treatises on Stoic philosophy that are still read, also the only Roman tragedies that survive (well, the only ones except 1 or 2 with his name on him that he didn’t actually write), and the Apocolocyntosis, a satire on the death and pumpkinification of the emperor Claudius.
Any town named Seneca after a Roman (rather than an Indian tribe) would surely have been named after the Younger Seneca. By the way, the Elder Seneca had two others sons, one the father of the poet Lucan, the other the Gallio who was governor of Achaea when St. Paul visited (Acts of the Apostles 18.12-17). Lucan and his uncle Seneca (the Younger) and the unrelated novelist Petronius were all murdered by Nero.
There were also two Catos and two Plinys (Plinies?), hence the ‘Elder’ and ‘Younger’ in those cases as well, but I’ll let Wikipedia tell anyone who wants to know more about them.
P.S. I just realized that Robert’s question whether “Seneca the Elder” is redundant is a joke: ‘Seneca’ looks like it may be derived from senex, “old man”. Oh well.
October 1, 2011, 10:32 pmMark Seecof says:
Okay, getting rather off-topic here, but Robert Graves wrote an interesting little essay on “the Pumpkinification of Claudius.” Graves wrote that he finally supposed the coinage “apocolocyntosis” ought to be translated “deification by colocynth” and that Seneca was really alluding to Claudius’ death having been procured by poisoning with the “bitter gourd” colocynth, administered by Claudius’ disloyal physician Xenophon. Graves had ended his famous historical novels “I, Claudius” and “Claudius the God” about the life and times of Claudius some years before by quoting Suetonius’, Tacitus’, and Dio Cassius’ accounts of Claudius death–they more or less agree that he was poisoned but suggest his wife gave him poison mushrooms–and finally by reproducing Seneca’s “Pumpkinification.” When he wrote “Claudius the God,” Graves’ had not yet decoded the colocynth connection. I have Graves’ essay in a book, which is sadly packed away at the moment so I am unable to give a proper citation.
October 2, 2011, 1:23 amMarkie mark says:
Alexandria, VA was named for the Alexander brothers who bought the land for 100 bales of tobacco on which they founded the city and named it after themselves.
Doesn’t cut it.
Memphis is a better winner in my mind.
October 2, 2011, 9:28 amSyd Henderson says:
San Diego is St. Didacus, after whom the mission was named. Is there some dispute over this?
October 2, 2011, 10:38 amSyd Henderson says:
Oh, I see; the name apparently goes back to Vicaino’s flagship, which was also probably named for St. Didacus.
October 2, 2011, 10:47 amDavid McCourt says:
Austin, Texas, is bigger than New Orleans,and derives its name, indirectly, via Augustine, from Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.
October 2, 2011, 1:56 pmAaron G says:
I’m pretty sure we can play six degrees of Roman with any U.S. city. Just like Kevin Bacon.
October 3, 2011, 1:08 amJosh Tate says:
There were plenty of ancient Roman political leaders named Antonius, and some indirect line of descent probably will take you to the saint for whom San Antonio is named, as has already been suggested.
I’ll be surprised if someone can top San Antonio. Eboracum (which gave us York) does not seem to be named after a person. Los Angeles refers to angels generally as far as I know. Chicago has Native American roots, Philadelphia refers to brotherly love, the Phoenix is a mythological bird, and Hugh (which gave us Houston) is a Germanic name.
October 3, 2011, 2:15 amJosh Tate says:
That is, unless you buy the theory that the Virgin Mary was a Roman political leader and try to get Los Angeles in that way as Syd suggests. I don’t think politics were her forte (or that she would have considered herself a Roman). The name Mary ultimately is of Hebrew origin.
October 3, 2011, 2:23 amJosh Tate says:
Actually, I just noticed that the question asks about American cities, not U.S. cities. In that case, the winner could be São Paulo, Brazil (which, being in South America, would be considered an American city in most parts of the world). Although St. Paul was a Christian leader, he was a Roman citizen and that turned out to be quite important to his life story. And, although his activities blurred the line between politics and religion, he’s certainly quoted by politicians often enough.
October 3, 2011, 2:44 am