
I Asked 1000 Americans to Name a British City Other Than London - yaph
http://blogsession.co.uk/2013/09/british-cities/
======
kghose
I don't know what the author's real motives were (Was it really to beat on the
theme that 'Americans are ignorant?), but I personally think this is a good
exercise to humble yourself - 'My country/city is not as important as I think
it is'.

Frankly, Britain is not as important as it once was and hasn't been for half a
century. And it's not particularly notable. You would have better luck with
Germany, France, Greece, Russia or many countries in Asia which are much more
interesting tourist destinations and have more name recognition.

I see this in science a lot. There are people in a field who are very famous
and who get a little spoilt by that fame. But if you happen to mention their
name to someone from a slightly different field, its 'Who?'

I think it is important to realize that.

~~~
coldtea
> _I don 't know what the author's real motives were (Was it really to beat on
> the theme that 'Americans are ignorant?), but I personally think this is a
> good exercise to humble yourself - 'My country/city is not as important as I
> think it is'._

Defensive much? For one it proves they are quite ignorant on geography.
Britain might not be as important, but it's as well known a country as they
come. They would fair even worse with other European cities -- "You're from
Austria? I love Kangaroos!"

Heck, a few of the people I've asked for information didn't know large-ish
cities 50-70 miles across a state line from them. Like living in Grand Island
and having never heard of Wichita or Topeka.

Now, I can understand why that is: you can live all your life in Oklahoma or
Oregon without ever caring about what happens in New Mexico or Idaho, much
less about Britain or Japan. You just know what you have to know to get by in
your own life -- and you might be very knowledgable in your field and even
active in local politics etc. After all each state is the size of a large or
small country in Europe itself.

What's troubling is that this lack of geographical knowledge means a total
lack of interest and knowledge about world affairs -- that's how the only
affairs that matter to the population are the ones that have been spoonfed to
them by the media, and in the specific way they have been spoonfed to them.

In Europe, geographical skills are more or less taken for granted. And caring
about world affairs is very much mainstream, including going out of your way
to learn about them, not just what happens to be the discussion of the month
on TV/intertubes.

~~~
mkr-hn
Most Americans care a great deal about what happens in other countries, but
Europe, the middle east, and the rest of Asia are a long way from the drug war
on the border or economic tensions with countries in south and central
America. It's easy to forget that the planet is very big, and we're very far
away from your local concerns.

Brazil and Alberta are more urgent interests for me than the debt crisis in
Greece. That doesn't mean I don't care about what's happening over there, but
I have to prioritize. There are over 100 countries and at least as many things
worth knowing in each.

------
dspeyer
When I saw the headline I tried to think of one and failed. Then I saw the
list in the article and recognized most of the names, and could even say a few
things about them. And with those as priming, could name a few more.

Brains are weird.

~~~
agumonkey
I guess our database reverse index is short thus prone to lose content while
the data is still there. Once I give you the key, data flows out easily. It's
annoying though.

Another memory graph glitch, a minute ago I couldn't remember the name of the
file browser[1] .. for 20 seconds I kept thinking about Thor.. Thor.. then
Fubar. This happened to me enough to know that these aren't unrelated answers.
Answer was Thunar.[2]

[1] First time I boot this machine since a month, it has no desktop
environment per se, I run some graphical programs through bash.

[2] Phonetic hints are the most common of this partial answers, at least in my
brain, all of them shares a bit of the final answer.

------
officemonkey
Now, ask 1000 Londoners to name a City in Illinois other than Chicago.

~~~
johnchristopher
As a belgian european I often wonder if the United States seems as big to
americans as Europe seems big to me.

I wonder if it feels different to be a citizen of a small country or a citizen
of a continent-wide country such as the United States. Or maybe americans feel
they are californians or new-yorkers before being american ?

~~~
marknutter
I would say the culture here is fairly homogenous, so most people feel like
Americans before they feel like a citizen of their home state.

~~~
jacques_chester
Looking in from the outside, US culture is substantially less homogenous than
Australian culture.

Cultural variety arises from isolation. The US was founded sufficiently long
ago that there was time for each region to establish distinct cultural
flavours, in no small part contributed by waves of immigration being unevenly
spread throughout the country.

------
junto
You'd think that 'York' might be quite an obvious choice.

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keiferski
It doesn't say why Liverpool is the most common choice, but here's my theory,
as an American: the Beatles. Most Americans have heard of Liverpool in
relation to them.

~~~
buro9
Also, history.

Majority of UK emigration to the US was through Liverpool:
[http://www.european-emigration.com/uk/methods.html](http://www.european-
emigration.com/uk/methods.html)

Families would only need to know their family history to be vaguely aware of
that city.

------
jacques_chester
Australian comedian John Safran (and all-round crazy person) made a pretty
good point about this concept that Americans are uniquely ignorant of
geography:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z27xVjXBbk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z27xVjXBbk)

~~~
coldtea
Well, compared to what Australians? They are similarly insular.

A better comparison would be with Europeans.

The things he mentions as extremely insightful stuff people wouldn't know, e.g
Zaire, Congo, Republic of the Congo, the civil war there, etc are all quite
common knowledge.

~~~
jacques_chester
If there was a way to lay a wager on this, I would bet you a thousand Euros
that less than 10% of a randomly-selected sample of Europeans would be able to
correctly identify that 1. Zaire changed its name to the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, 2. where the DRC is, 3. that it is distinct from the RoC, 4.
that there has been a civil war and 5. how many people have died in it.

~~~
coldtea
Oh, I agree with that: less than 10% (with variatons from country to country).
Still plenty though, and (I'd say) more than would know the same thing in the
states.

As for knowing just simple facts about DRC, like where it is located and
having a vague idea of it's past with Belgium etc, the percentage would be
quite higher.

------
DanBC
So ... people have mentioned "priming".

If you stopped me and asked me to name a list of almost anything I guess the
results would depend what I'd been doing. Sometimes I'd be great and reel off
a nice list of lizards or Belgian scientists or words used by genetic
scientists in their papers or whatnot.

I also guess that most people would have similar results.

So, unless you turn this into a game[1] I'm not sure what the point is.

[1]
([http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2381/scattergories](http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2381/scattergories))

[1]
([http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4862/outburst](http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4862/outburst))

------
darasen
Given I follow English football Manchester was my first thought. I'd have
laughed if Midsomer made the list.

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SteveMoody73
As a Welsh man I'm fairly sure that Wales isn't a city :)

~~~
eru
It's a city, but not in the UK. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales_(disambiguation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales_\(disambiguation\))

------
mkr-hn
It's reasonable that most people are assuming this is yet another boring jab
at the ignorance that's somehow unique to us.

I could do the same and ask people to name a city in Georgia other than
Atlanta, Athens, or Savannah. A lot of people won't be able to do that. I
don't think anyone in Bogart or Carl is going to lose sleep over it, and I
don't think it would tell you anything about the people surveyed.

------
peterjs
I found an interesting figure [1] for those of us who could name a few, but
are not as well versed in the geography of Britain. It compares British cities
to similar European cities by population. The scale is unnecessarily skewed,
though.

[1]
[http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/figure1_tcm77-259156.png](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/figure1_tcm77-259156.png)

------
agumonkey
I realize most of the British city names I know are from soccer teams (except
for Arsenal etc). The rest is quite accidental :

\- music history (Beatles) \- trips (Canterbury is a regular short visit for
french schools)

The interviewees could also cheat. New York : USA, York : England.

------
minimax
It's interesting to see Birmingham in 8th place given that it's the 2nd
largest city in the United Kingdom. It would be weird if you saw a similar
list of American cities and Los Angeles came that far down.

~~~
sardonicbryan
A city like Phoenix (6), Jacksonville (12) or Columbus (15) would be a good
analogue.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population)

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eksith
You can cheat at this if you watch a lot of TopGear like I do.

~~~
e40
I've watched all eps of TG, but I don't recall them mentioning city names too
often.

~~~
moocowduckquack
_I 've watched all eps of TG_

You poor thing. Help is available if you only just ask.

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cmdkeen
Intriguingly in the full list he's lumped "brighton" with "briton/england" \-
Brighton is actually a place, albeit not a city.

~~~
tapworthtg
"he" is a "she" you sexist idiot.

~~~
67726e
I think you need to carry yourself a bit more like an adult. Whoever posted
that comment probably didn't bother to check the gender of the author, and as
in many languages, the pronoun people tend to default to is the masculine
"he". There isn't anything inherently sexist about that, it's just how the
language is.

------
luscious
This screams of... did you not realize how unimportant you've become?

This game is equally well-played with all the places we like to bomb. Watch
it.

------
carsongross
How is it our fault that there is only one British city that matters?

(Says the guy who lives in Sacramento)

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Jakob
Paris :)

------
blutack
Not sure how Manchester could be beloved of anyone.

~~~
wreckimnaked
as a foreigner: The Smiths, Joy Division (and then New Order), the Stone
Roses, the Happy Mondays.

~~~
zimpenfish
The Buzzcocks, The Chameleons, James (before they went awful), Inspiral
Carpets, The Fall, Crispy Ambulance, and millions* more.

Plus the city itself is upmarket gentrified in the centre parts now. Just
avoid the students and you'll be alright.

* ok, maybe tens.

------
brixon
Camelot

------
mumbi
I'm not British(I'm American), but I'm going to start doing surveys like this
to people in America. It looks to fun to see what we come up with.

