In the United States, I’d probably name Oregon City, the famous end of the Oregon Trail and the first city founded west of the Rocky Mountains during the pioneer era. Its population is only 37,000.
In Denmark it’s probably Snave (No English Wikipedia page for it). Population is a whopping 211 people. It was popularized in a series of commercials for a Danish cellular carrier. The concept was so popular that there even was a movie. I haven’t seen it, but the reviews seems to suggest it could be fun to watch… If you are drunk enough.
The word “snave” in Danish can somewhat be translated to snogging in English. Heavy kissing. Which has led to the city having massive problems with theft of their signs.
As someone in the US - I have absolutely zero recognition of the town of Oregon City. All I know about the Oregon trail is a bunch of people died from starvation and dysentery
Don’t forget being lost in River crossings.
Fucking, Austria. Population of around 100 People. They renamed it to Fugging a few years ago
Darwin, Australia.
Famous for being bombed by the Japanese repeatedly during World War 2
I’d go with Port Arthur, Tasmania. 251 people from the 2016 census and the massacre is still burned into many people’s memories.
In the UK and a city? Probably Liverpool and because of The Beatles.
A Town? Well it certainly used to be Lockerbie where Pan-Am flight 103 crashed after a terrorist bombing just before Christmas 1988. It was on it’s way from London to New York.
Probably not known by the younger generations though.
Bobcaygeon, population 3,500.
Pueblo, CO from tv commercials or maybe Wala Wala, WA from Bugs Bunny.
Walla Walla, it was also a lyric in an Offspring song.
Also in this song
Witch Doctor - Ooh Eeh Ooh Ah Aah Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang
I haven’t seen a TV ad in years; who’s out there talking about Pueblo?
Not my location, but Scranton, PA?
Dont live near Pennsylvania at all, but Scranton sounds very familiar .
“The Office”
How about: name a country and name the smallest city you recognize from there. Like New Zealand you could say Rotarua
In the Netherlands is probably Giethoorn, the ‘Venice of the North’ which has many canals instead of roads and is very touristy. It has 2.900 inhabitants
I guess the one that pretty much everyone knows in Germany is Buxtehude. It is being used as the poster child for a backwards town, far away from cities. Which is funny because neither is it backwards, remote or even very small. With a population of 40k it’s relatively large, compared to many other places in Germany, even just right next to Buxtehude. It is not far from Hamburg and its historic core is worth a visit. I think the name itself is the reason why it is being made fun of so much. Though there are so many other, much quirkier named towns in Germany but it somehow became Buxtehude.
Chicken, Alaska. Population: 12
I’d argue that everyone recognises the word “Chicken”.Fun fact: The settlers wanted to name their town “Ptarmigan” after the birds that were abundant in the area.
But none of them knew the correct spelling, and they didn’t want to embarass themselves.Congratulations, you played yourself.
For the US, I’d say a pretty strong contender is Woodstock, NY, with a population of around 6,000, and of course famous for the music festival of the same name (even though the actual festival was something like 60 miles away in Bethel)
A good number of these are examples where most people don’t actually know that the name comes from a town. I feel like they shouldn’t count.
This is probably the most iconic for sure.
Edit: I just realised the question was recognising the name of the city, not recognising city based on a picture…
Probably Svolvær/Lofoten with a population of ~4700. It doesn’t have the official status of “City” in Norway though.
Damn, Morrowind with mods does look great nowadays
Ramstein, population ~5600
I went to school on base, grades 1-4, mid 1960s. My takeaway: planes with Ramjets!
