neAmerican terminology

[studiot]

Can anyone tell me the difference to an American between a City, a Town and a Village please|?

[Phi for All]

I believe it depends on how the municipality incorporated with their particular state. I don't think it's consistent at all, just a civil distinction that has meaning within a state.

 

The state structure usually decides what the differences are. My state has no technical classification for a village, and very little distinguishes cities from towns.

[Sato]

The average Joe vocabulary has a mix of meanings for each one. Cities and towns are usually considered as some distinct geopolitical entity, usually with its own residents, community, stores, centres / churches, and zip code. However, the word "city" usually connotes something larger and more urban than a "town". While there are some towns and neighbourhoods that have "village" in their names, like Greenwich Village, and have sorts of hypocorisms like "The Village", the improper noun "village" as in "a village" usually associates to some either very small or very rural town, usually foreign in culture (including American Native American reservations and Amish settlements).

 

There are legal designations of each term for different kinds of local government, but I think these differ from state to state.

[studiot]

Thanks for the information so far.

 

Are there no religous connections?

[Endy0816]

What do you mean by religious connections?

[arc]

I think it is dependent on how it was applied historically at the local level, ethnic origins of the founders and/or dependent on local or national history. To the inhabitants of an Appalachian "hollow", I would assume a small assemblage of commercial interests may be referred to as a town or city.

 

I always thought a town officially became a city when they incorporated, but I could be wrong.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville

 

When a suffix was needed, -town (or the word Town) was typically added (as in Charleston, South Carolina, originally Charles Town). In the middle of the 18th century the suffixes -borough (-boro) and -burgh (-burg) came into style. The use of -town (-ton) also increased, in part due to the increasing use of personal names for new settlements. Thus the settlement founded by William Trent became known as Trenton. These three suffixes, -town/-ton, -borough/-boro, and -burgh/-burg became popular before the Revolution, while -ville was almost completely unused until afterward. Its post-revolutionary popularity, along with the decline in the use of-town, was due in part to the pro-French sentiments which spread through the country after the war.

 

A few -ville names pre-date the revolution, but most of them are named after European settlements or dukedoms. For example, Granville, Massachusetts was named for the Earl of Granville (he was named himself after Granville, Manche (Normandy)). After the revolution and the decline in the use of -borough and -town, the two suffixes -ville and -burgh/-burg became by far the most popular for many decades.

 

By the middle of the 19th century the -ville suffix began to lose its popularity, with newly popular suffixes with -wood, -hurst, -mere, -dale, and others taking over.

[Sensei]

Can anyone tell me the difference to an American between a City, a Town and a Village please|?

 

Can this be analyzed by how much they like/dislike Country music.. ?

 

Prior industry era, division was very easy, and worldwide the same, by how people spend their time.

Whether they are peasants or doing something else for living.

It's hard/impossible to harvest, raise pigs, or cows in town/city.

 

In modern technological world, you can be in middle of nowhere and still have electricity from solar panels, internet, and doing anything what you want through net.

The state structure usually decides what the differences are. My state has no technical classification for a village, and very little distinguishes cities from towns.

 

Here town has to have Town privileges

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_privileges

It requires to have more than 2,000 people, with 2/3 people employed outside of agricultural industry.

It is not strictly adhered. The largest village has 13k+ people. The smallest city has <1k.

 

Town or city with less than 100,000 people have Mayor,

while larger cities have President of city.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Sensei

[ajb]

What do you mean by religious connections?

In the UK the definition of a city meant that the settlement had to have a cathedral. This is no longer the case.

[Phi for All]

 

Here town has to have Town privileges

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_privileges

It requires to have more than 2,000 people, with 2/3 people employed outside of agricultural industry.

It is not strictly adhered. The largest village has 13k+ people. The smallest city has <1k.

 

Town or city with less than 100,000 people have Mayor,

while larger cities have President of city.

 

This is exactly the way it is in the US, only the numbers and titles change state to state. I'm not entirely sure, but there might also be some overarching federal criteria as well, so a municipality might get extra funding for certain programs if they qualify by structuring the way they're incorporated to match federal grant guidelines.

 

It had nothing to do with religious connections, afaik, probably because we're supposed to separate church from state.

[Endy0816]

In the UK the definition of a city meant that the settlement had to have a cathedral. This is no longer the case.

 

Ah, I see.

 

Yeah, I have never heard of such a requirement here.

[imatfaal]

 

It had nothing to do with religious connections, afaik, probably because we're supposed to separate church from state.

 

Whereas we in the UK have an established Church which we almost completely ignore (except for weddings and funerals so that we can have a good sing-song). The Cathedral/City thing is not important any more. The last two towns to be granted City Status by Royal Patent were Chelmsford (boring - see Dickins) and St Asaph - and the last one to lose status was Rochester cos of an enormous administrative cock-up.

 

IIRC in France you need to fulfil certain tasks to move one step up the ladder - some important (at least for Tourists) requirements are a Camping Municipale and Piscine; which is why there are so many lovely cheap and cheerful campsites in France.

 

 

 

[overtone]

Can anyone tell me the difference to an American between a City, a Town and a Village please|?

 

 

In the US the distinction would vary considerably by State. In my State we have "townships", areas under a single governance that may or may not (almost all do) include an actual "town". Back in the 1970s many but not all legally incorporated "towns" and "villages" were converted from "charter cities" to "statutory cities" - meaning they had to have or arrange for certain bureaucratic duties, had to have accountable officials of certain kinds, etc, in order to gain certain privileges regarding zoning and taxation etc - http://www.lmc.org/page/1/cities-and-towns-townships.jsp.

 

So in Minnesota there are no legal "villages"any more, and the word is not common - it's a term I associate with stories about people who live far away or long ago, like "hamlet" - while vernacular "towns" are anyplace with shopping (the word interchanges with "city" at any level below "big city" or "the city").

 

So where I live, originally a village and now a legal city, is either a town or a city depending on who's talking and why. And this entity is afaik always called a "town" if it's called anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birchwood_Village,_Minnesota, although legally it's a "city" and the residents put some effort into keeping the term "village" associated with it by changing the official name of what is officially a city.

 

Calling something a "village" in my area nowdays attaches implications of small, quaint, friendly, honest, cute, safe, old-fashioned, slow, rural, fun to visit, etc etc. People use the term for marketing - shopping centers, tourist attractions of one kind or another. The other common use is in connection with "idiot", as in "somewhere there's a village that really misses this guy" or "y'know, we should call his village and see if they'll take him back".

 

Compare this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welch_Villagewith the "town" closest to it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welch,_Minnesota. Notice that there are at least two "towns" closer than the "nearest city" to the ski lifts: Welch and Vasa. These are actual towns, in a sense - they have some shopping - but they are both unincorporated, and therefore not legal cities but rather densely populated subregions of the associated townships. And anyone talking about "Welch Village" is talking about the ski resort - not the town.

 

And all this is in Minnesota. Different States, different laws, different vernacular. For contrast, try Louisiana.

 

And thanks, - I had fun.

Edited January 12, 2016 by overtone

[EdEarl]

Rapid City SD was founded in 1876, and had previously been called Hay Camp. Gold had been found nearby in the black hills, which residents of Hay Camp intended to exploit. I can find no population statistics for Hay Camp in 1876, but the founders of Rapid City laid out a square mile and proclaimed the central six blocks to be the business district. Some might call Hay Camp a village, and changing its name to Rapid City didn't change its status to city. Today it has about 68,000 people and some might call that a town.

 

Except for running the risk of offending citizens of Rapid City, one might call it a village, town or city and not violate any rules and regulations AFAIK. IIRC townships were at one time laid out on a square mile and were so established by state law. SD was not a state until 1889.

[studiot]

Thank you those who have added new information since I last looked.

 

Imatfaal the French connection goes back further than you think (certainly further than the film).

 

In Europe, including England and Scotland, The village and town (called ton, burgh etc) were constructs of the Feudal System,as I'm sure you know.

A bonded man who escaped a village and made it to a town became free for instance

The village acknowledged one ruling Lord, a town had a committee or council of some sort.

The city is even older as in the ancient greek City-States, which recognised no overseeing authority.

 

The word city fell into disuse in Roman times as everywhere, owed allegiance to Rome but was maintained in the word citadel, around which many later cities were developed.