Famous destinations that inspired U.S. towns

Just like people, places sometimes share the same name. Paris, for example, isn’t just the capital of France; it’s also a town in northeastern Texas. In fact, there are more than a dozen American towns called Paris and that's not the only example of place-name trickery. If you say you visited China, it could mean that you flew across the Pacific, or it could mean that you spent time in the other China, which is near Augusta, Maine.

Some of these geographic double takes are due to immigrants wanting to honor their motherland or town founders trying to point to some sort of real or perceived shared history. A few towns, however, seem to have no connection whatsoever to the much-more-famous place.

Here are several American places and the stories of how they got their famous names.