25 Towns that Changed Names - mental_floss on YouTube - List Show (308)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube

And did you know that in 2005 the town of Clark, Texas officially renamed itself to Dish, Texas

The satellite TV company Dish Network offered residents free service and equipment in exchange for the rename

The agreement ends this year, and the town hasn't yet decided whether to renew the deal or become Clark again

And that's the first of many towns that changed their names that we're going to learn about in today's video

You'll remember from our episode on the 50 states that Topeka, Kansas once briefly changed

its name to Google in order to encourage Google to install fiber internet there

That's how desperate we are for real broadband! In 1950, the television show Truth or Consequences was about to celebrate its 10 year anniversary

so it offered to broadcast its anniversary episode from any American town that would

change its name to Truth or Consequences. Hot Springs, New Mexico won and has kept the name ever since

There's a Beverly Hills in New South Wales, Australia. The town was originally called Dumbleton, but the citizens hated it, so they renamed

it Beverly Hills in 1931 after the town in California because they associated it with

Hollywood glamour. Little did they know if they'd just stuck with Dumbleton, one day they would be associated

with the greatest headmaster that Hogwarts has ever known. Although locals still call it Gay Head Massachusetts, the town was officially renamed Aquinnah thanks

to a town vote in 1997. Now people believe it's because the original name sounded risque, but the man who started

the petition to change it didn't cite that as a reason. His rationale was, this is an Indian place and it should have an Indian name

In 2015, the city of Oregon, Ohio had a problem. The Ohio State Buckeyes were set to play the University of Oregon Ducks in the College

National Football Championship. So the city officially renamed itself Oregon, Ohio. Buckeyes on the Bay, City of Duck Hunters for about a week

And sure enough Ohio State won the national championship that year The village of Cross Keys Pennsylvania renamed itself Intercourse in 1814 According to the village website there are a few theories about why the name was chosen

One is because the word intercourse means social interaction and support. You know, like Batman and Robin's relationship

Speaking of Pennsylvania, the town 84 Pennsylvania used to be called Smithville, but it turned

out that there was another Smithville, so it was renamed in 1884

The new name also might have had something to do with that being the year that the Great

Grover Cleveland was elected to the presidency. Smithville, now 84, was just so excited

Who could blame the residents of the former Smithville for being so incredibly excited

about the election of the Great Grover Cleveland, who has the best first name of all the presidents

You heard me, Millard Fillmore. Anyway, in 1995, Bombay, India officially became Mumbai

This happened because the Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena got control of the state assembly

at around that time. They believed that Bombay was a reminder of British colonial rule, so they switched it

to Mumbai, a reference to the Kohli goddess Mumbadevi. Holyoke, Massachusetts used to be called Ireland because of all the Irish immigrants who lived

there, but eventually it was named for the son-in-law of a settler, William Pynchon

who was like, I like my son-in-law, let's call the city after him

Thanks to the great They Might Be Giants song, you probably know that the capital of Turkey

Istanbul used to be called Constantinople, but in fact, the city has actually had over

eight names throughout its history. Istanbul, which means the city, became the official name in 1930 because the postal service

required one consistent name. Berlin, in Ontario, Canada, changed its name to Kitchener during World War I due to animosity

toward the Germans. The proposed name change in 1916 wasn't particularly popular, but it was put to a referendum in

which the option to keep the name Berlin was not on the ballot

Only about 900 people in the town of 15,000 showed up to vote, and only around 350 voted

for Kitchener, but it still won. Mira Loma, California used to be Wineville, but then it changed its name in the 1930s

to disassociate itself from the Wineville Chicken Coop murders in which multiple young boys were murdered in the 1920s Back when it was just a settlement Enigma Georgia was known as Gunn and Weston which

would be a very popular town name today. But they eventually named it Enigma, because according to the town's founder, it was a

puzzle what to name it. Man, if they wanted a puzzle, they should have just named it Tetris

A-Rab, Alabama was supposed to be called A-Rad, after the son of the town's founder, but the

the US Postal Service messed up and the name Arab stuck. The Russian city of Volgograd used to be called Tsaritsyn and then Stalingrad, after Joseph Stalin

Khrushchev's administration changed the name in the 1960s, but some people still referred

to it as Stalingrad. Now showing that Russia is just a smidge more Staliny than it was under Khrushchev, the title

Hero City Stalingrad is allowed to be used on nine celebratory dates, like February 2nd

in honor of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. In the late 19th century, Pile of Bones Canada was renamed Regina, which is Latin for Queen

It was originally named for the piles of buffalo bones left by the First Peoples, who kept the piles there because they believed the buffalo might return to the same spot

I don't know if you know this, but Metal Floss executive producer and director Mark Olsen is himself from Pile of Bones Canada

He says that he's from Edmonton, but from now on I'm calling every city in Canada Pile of Bones

When the city of Wellington, New Zealand was asked to host the world premiere of The Hobbit

and Unexpected Journey in 2012, it was renamed the Middle of Middle-Earth that week

They even changed their city's main newspaper title to reflect it. The Japanese town containing Toyota's main plant was renamed from Koromo to Toyota in

1959 because the plant was so big that it allowed the village to become a city

Though the city of Guangzhou, China was never officially named Canton, that's what Westerners

knew it as between the 1500s and 1900s. It's believed that the name came to be when the Portuguese put a trading post there and

mispronounced the name Guangzhou very, very badly, but to locals it's been called that

since about 190 CE. In 2000 the town of Halfway Oregon accepted a deal from the website Half to rename their town to Half for a year Which reminds me whatever happened to Half The town of Lake City Florida was once a seminal village with a name that translated

to Alligator Village. But when the city was incorporated in 1859, there was already a neighboring town named

Alligator because, you know, Florida. So they had to switch to Lake City, which is unfortunate because Alligator Village is

a much better description. Speaking of which, Lake City, Tennessee was renamed Rocky Top in 2014 because

as developers wanted to build a theme park there named after the song

What they didn't know was that rights to the song were already owned, so the name change

was approved, but any souvenirs for the town might be considered copyright infringement

Un-Alaska-Alaska is an Americanized version of Un-Alaska, the Russian version of what the

indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska named it. In their language, it meant near the peninsula, and then in 1788 the Spanish took it over

and renamed it… that. But within a century, the Russians took it back, then the US bought it, and Un-Alaska

became the official name. But now, millions of people just call it Dutch Harbor

Because that's what they call it on Deadliest Catch. And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that Motch Chunk, Pennsylvania was renamed

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania in 1953 when the Olympic medalist died. Thorpe was actually born in Oklahoma, and although he did play sports in Pennsylvania

growing up, that was about 100 miles away from Motch Chunk. His wife Patricia wanted money upon his death and Machchunk was willing to pay and change

their name so they could get a monument to the former decathlon runner

Then now, his grave lives there. Well, to be fair, I'd pay almost anything not to be named Machchunk, Pennsylvania

Anyway, thanks for watching Menoplas here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people who every week endeavor to bring you top quality educational material

with only the occasional factual error which is usually introduced by me when I mispronounce something

chunk malk malk chunk that's Jim Thorpe now don't forget to be awesome