Why might lands in the New World have been given names similar to those of the Holy Land?

Thomas R. Valletta

“All the names we give to our lands and cities are those we had in the old country. As far as naming them after heroes of the Old Testament, this is exactly what people would do. In upstate New York, Joseph Smith’s country, you have a Rome, an Athens, and a Syracuse. You have all the old classical names of towns up there. We carry our old names over, and we keep our traditions. We don’t invent names cold, unless they describe either the founder of the city or some peculiar thing about it” (Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, 4:195).

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