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 France it might be Y (population : 89), famous for having a one-letter name. Far from “anyone can still instantly recognise the name” but still probably much more well-known than any other town this size.
Otherwise idk, feels like the only french city everyone would instantly recognise the name of is Paris tbh.
Tilt Cove in Newfoundland. 5 whole people.
I’m in the US and I can’t say I’d heard of Oregon City before this post…
Oregon City would be my answer to ‘what’s the capital of Oregon?’
Just a standard, since I never heard of the capital I’ll try the state name plus city guess.
I take it it’s not Portland?
I just looked it up. Salem is the capital. Portland is the largest city.
I am not in the US. Never heard of Oregon City. But Atlantic City sounds really familiar.
Fairly big city and a tourist destination if you are too trash to go to Reno, which is where you go if you are too trash to go to Vegas.
Ocean City is the new Atlantic City anyway.
For real. I’d think many more people could name Panama city in Florida. Famous spring break and vacation city every kid who’s gone through college or listened to Van Halen knows of. Also has a population of less than 36,000 people.
I thought the Oregon Trail was a pretty standard part of US history curriculum.
From US, played Oregon trail for hundreds of hours, didn’t remember Oregon City.
Nantucket Massachusetts 10k
Aspen Colorado 7k
Jackson Hole Wyoming 10k
Key West Florida 25k
Probably all more famous and smaller population.
Tombstone, AZ has a population of 1,313.
And every one of them is hot.
Hannibal, MO - 16,838 - back when people read books they’d know this as the birthplace of Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain
I think the game ended in The Dalles didn’t it?
I too have never heard of Oregon City. I can only assume it’s in Oregon. The only thing I remember about the Oregon Trail is that I died from dysentery every time I followed the trail.
It was popular, but I think most folks who played it remember dying of dysentery, not the cities 😆
Oregon trail, yes, Oregon city, no. I remember learning that it went from independence Missouri to the Willamette Valley. If I had to guess where I thought it ended, I would have said Portland.
We were taught about it, but most Americans don’t view westward expansion with the same… Reverence? Notoriety?
Like, I remember learning about it across multiple grades, but… Oregon City being the final destination, that’s not something I would probably remember a year or two later, nevermind a decade or more.
Not really, not in our school district anyways. They did allow us to play the game based on that on their ancient computers, but never really gave us historical context, nor were we required to play the game.
I didn’t learn shit about it back then, and barely get it today. I’m 42 years old for reference.
It is. But that’s not saying much.
I may have had to keep a few of the waypoints of the trail in my head for, oh, a week or so, just long enough to scribble it on a history test. Then that information was immediately cleared out to make way for whatever other junk we had to temporarily memorize next chapter.
Only a vague, blurry notion that the Oregon Trail A) existed and B) was a trail to (presumably) somewhere in Oregon remains with me today. Oregon City is certainly not a part of that notion.
Not to shit on the Oregon Trail or Oregon City in particular, of course. I would be truly baffled to meet anyone that retained, in significant detail, even a tenth of what any grade school history class purportedly taught them.
But most of the world did not have the US education system. I’d say only some Americans have heard of Oregon City, and very few non Americans.
Germany:
Bielefeld. Everyone recognizes the name, it’s marked on all maps, officially it has a football club.
But in reality, it doesn’t even exist.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.
In the US it must be Springfield because there’s so fucking many of them that they
namedmade a TV show after it.Stupid sexy autocorrect.
named a TV show after it
The Springfields?
Okay, I spilled my coffee. I’ll be giggling all day.
Unfortunately, I would guess that school shooter locations are probably the most easily recognised in the US. Uvalde has a population of ~15,000, for instance.
Sandy Hook is ~9,000. You may not remember, but Alex Jones does.
Yeah Alex Jones can rot in hell
We remember.
OP said famous, not infamous.
💀
Ah yeah, I was going for instantly recognizable
Similar to how more people have heard of Lockerbie than any other Scottish town of 5000 people.
Not my country, but what immediately came to mind was one that has global name recognition, and minimal population: Chernobyl.
It used to have around 12,000 population, but now it’s technically illegal to live nearby, and up to 150 people are estimated to live there today. It’s famous for being toxically irradiated as a result of the worst nuclear disaster in human history
Roswell, NM comes to mind. Tiny and yet most people will think of UFOs when they hear the name.
Waco, TX for anyone around in the 90s
I can’t think of a smaller city in the US that fits “so many have heard of it”
Tombstone comes to mind as well
Dodge City, maybe
I was gonna say Albuquerque, because of the name itself, the weird Al song and Breaking Bad, but Roswell is way tinier.
don’t forget being famous for wrong turns
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.
I think people really overestimate how much everybody knows about the US.
I’d say there’s a large population that only know NYC, LA, and Chicago.
Used to be Dallas was pretty famous- Kennedy shooting, cheerleaders, and a titular TV show.
I’d say Salem, Massachusetts (pop just under 45k) is pretty famous thanks to the witch trials.
Not my experience, as a Canadian. I’m guessing Europe is a bit more ignorant, but they’ll still know about the other big cities and basic regions like the South. In the third world you might be right. No clue about East Asia.
Van Halen and Spring Break dictates that everyone knows Panama city.
Population of under 36,000.
“Panama isn’t about a city, it’s the stage name of a stripper from Albuquerque!”
- David Lee Roth
It doesn’t matter that it isn’t actually about the city. That doesn’t change that people think of and know Panama the city due to the song. They either know it because they think it’s about the city, or they know it because they’re like you with their “actually”, which shows that you and anyone else who knows it’s about a stripper still knows of the city.
Schengen - the village in Luxembourg where the Schengen Agreement was signed. The population was 5196 in 2023 (appears to be the last census quoted on Wikipedia) and the “Schengen Area”, covered by the agreement represents 450m people.
I didn’t even know there were multiple villages in Luxembourg. I kinda thought it was a city-state.
I thought so too before moving here, but there’s two cities, and a lot of empty space (in the north in particular) with lots of towns and villages, it’s not like Monaco or the Vatican City in that regard.
That being said, it’s still all very close together, you can drive from the northern most point to the south in about 1.5-2 hours.
The funniest thing I’ve learned about the geography is that there is a North/South divide where people from either don’t trust people from the other.
That is funny!
That’s a great one!
Nokia, Finland, population 36,000. Cellphones, tyres, rubber boots, …
I’d try Bodom, population 0, if other than cities are allowed.
Or possibly Santa’s village, population 2 (if you exclude the elves)
Does it count if you know the thing it’s known for but not that it’s a place?
I actually used to own a cellphone and tyres from Nokia at the same time.
Ramstein, population ~5600
Famous for the Ramstein Air base, the bombing of the air base, the Ramstein air show disaster and the band named after all of that.
I went to school on base, grades 1-4, mid 1960s. My takeaway: planes with Ramjets!
Gibraltar has a population of 32,000, which by some definitions is too small to be considered a city.
Gibraltar is a city?
I am American, so low bar, but there are dozens of us.
It’s a city, it’s a really big rock, it’s a maritime port, it’s the only wild monkey population in Europe, it’s a 2½ mi2 British Overseas Territory whose status is perennially contested by Spain.
