4. Cincinnati was Losantiville
Another one of the huge list of US cities that changed their names over the years is Cincinnati. The city, once known as the Queen City of the West, Athens of the West, or even Little Paris due to its breathtaking landscape and streets, adopted the new moniker Losantiville sometime in the early 1800s.
The word “os,” which is Greek meaning “mouth,” was combined with the Latin word “anti,” which means “opposite,” and the French word “Ville,” which means “town,” to create the name.
One tradition has it that the first governor of the Northwest Territories, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, did not approve of this name.
When he arrived at the town in 1790, he said, “The name of the city is terrible; you should call it Cincinnati!” as soon as he got off the boat. The name stuck with the locals until today.
…psst! Don’t leave us just yet! We have a couple more US cities that changed their names in the next pages!
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New Bedford, Massachusetts, once the ‘Whaling Capitol of the World’, & now the leading port of the nascent US Offshore Wind Energy, was once known as ‘Bedford’ until it was learned that Massachusetts already had a city/town known as Bedford in the upper part of the state.