Lost Lands: Place names off the map
Let’s say you like the basic concept of place names, but you’re not so thrilled when they’re tied to the image of specific locales. If, for example, you’re thinking Tulsa sounds like a nice, friendly, easygoing, Western name– but then suddenly the image of Oklahoma oil fields spring to mind, or say you think Trenton might be the perfect boy’s name—if it weren’t for the New Jersey connection.
There is one way around this. You could consider place names — city names, state names, country names, and beyond — that are no longer on the map. This may be because of a name change, possibly for political reasons, or because the place itself disappeared…or may have never even existed at all.
Here, some romantic, faraway examples of these off-the-map place names, mostly with non-specific images:
ALBION—old poetic name for England
ANGLIA—Latin name of England
ANNAM—historic name for part of Vietnam
ARABY—old poetic name for Arabia
ATRIA –ancient city in central Italy
ATLANTIS—legendary island supposed to have sunk into the Atlantic
AVALON-another legendary island, this one featured in the Arthurian tales (though one still exists in California)
BRIXIA—the ancient Latin name of the modern Northern Italian city of Brescia
CANTON—Chinese city now called Guangzhou
CARAL –a Peruvian settlement considered the most ancient city of the Americas
CEYLON—old name of Sri LankaCILICIA – the ancient name of southern Turkey
COBA—large ruined city of the Pre-Columbian Mayan civilization, located in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico
CORINTH—ancient city in the Peloponnesus (there is a modern city of that name)
DACIA—ancient province in southeast Europe inhabited by the Thracian people
DAHOMEY—old name of Benin
DAMASIA –sank into the Ammersee, Germany
EDO –the original name of Tokyo, changed in 1868
FERDINANDEA- a submerged volcanic island south of Sicily
IZAPA – chief city of the Izapa civilization which once extended through present day Mexico and Guatemala
KANE – a city in Wyoming that was lost when the Yellowtail Dam was built
KRISTIANIA/CRISTIANIA—the name by which Oslo, Norway was known for three centuries
LOULAN – an ancient Chinese city
MADRAS—Indian city now called Chennai
MALAYA — now called Malaysia
NARNIA—C.S. Lewis took the name from an ancient Roman town in Umbria (but how many people would know that?)
NINEVEH-capital of ancient Assyria
NIYA –an important ancient Chinese city now called Minfeng
PARTHIA –an empire of the ancient Near East
PERSIA—old name of Iran
POMPEII – the ancient Roman city that was buried under volcanic ash after the eruption of Vesuvius
PRUSSIA—historic region of north Germany
SARAI—one of the largest cities of the medieval world
SARNIA—old name of Guernsey
SIAM—former name of Thailand
SPARTA—-ancient city in the Peloponnesus
TANIS—ancient Egyptian city
TELJÄ- ancient town of Finland
THRACE—ancient region in the Balkan Peninsula
THULE—ancients considered it the northern most region of the world
TROY—ancient city, destroyed by the Trojan Wars (there’s still a Troy in upstate NY)
VINETA — legendary ancient town on the Baltic coast
XANADU—ruined summer capital of Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty in China