No, The Other One...

You know, for as great as their spirit of adventure was, the early settlers of this country sure were an unimaginative group of people. I mean, how else can you explain the complete lack of originality when it came to naming places? Every town name is just recycled from somewhere else. For example, the pilgrims left from Plymouth aboard the Mayflower and they landed in... Plymouth. Really? They had over two months of staring at the ocean with nothing else to do but let their minds wander and come up with some kick-ass name to signify how much better their lives were going to be in the new world and in all that time the only thing they could think of was to give the new place the same name as the place they just left? I could stand in line at the grocery store for five minutes and come up with something more original than that.

I get that some of the places had to be named out of respect for the monarch who financed the trip, but at some point that deal had to expire, right? At the very least by the time people started settling California it should have been ok for people to start naming places whatever their heart desired. Yet, they just kept on recycling the same names over and over again in every state across the country. I'm sure the writers of "The Simpsons" appreciate the joke since they've been milking for 20 years, but the rest of us should be slightly embarrassed that we were founded by such unoriginal bastards that we have a town name Springfield every 200 miles. Maybe it was performance anxiety. I assume it would be tough to name something knowing it was going to be on maps for the rest of time. The self-doubt and second-guessing would be high. But, at least then we could have appreciated the efforts.

This is on my mind today because I happen to like to keep up with what is going on in my hometown and have set up a Google News Alert for Norwood. The problem is that even though I asked for the Massachusetts one, Google isn't nearly as specific as I am about which Norwood. Instead anytime the word appears, Google News shows the article to me. Normally I can tell right away when the story is about another Norwood, but the problem is that sometimes the people in charge of naming an area were extremely lazy and copied not only a town name, but the names of several towns around it. So when I was reading a story about the Norwood library in Norfolk, I felt safe assuming it was the one I'm from and not the one in up-state New York, which made my confusion about the library's potential closing all the greater considering Norwood just rebuilt its library a few years ago. It was only when I saw pictures of the library that I realized Google doesn't share my fickle nature when it comes to geography.

Of course, that is far from the only other Norwood Google wants to keep me informed about. I also get alerts when big things happen in Norwood, Ohio and Norwood, New Jersey. I'm sure it is only a matter of time before something happens in Norwood, South Australia that Google can't wait to tell me about. But at least I can take comfort in the fact that Norwood, Massachusetts appears to be the largest of all of them, which means that not only are people in those other Norwoods are dealing with the same thing I am, but the majority of the time it is about my town. I mean, it could be worse: I could be from Canton, which means I would constantly get Google Alerts every time something happened at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I guess if you're going to be lumped in with several places that all have the same name, you at least want to be the most famous of the group.