I suppose the Alaskan growing season is too short to crow about fields and farms. I identified only12 states that did not have a town name that started with вЂњfarm.вЂќ One of them was Alaska. In other words, more than half of the states in the United States have a town (or other type of municipality) named Farmington. I found thirty (thatвЂ™s right, 30) states with places named Farmington. The most popular suffix, however, was the one based on the word town, -ton. towns named Farmingdale: Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, and Vermont.

A slightly more popular suffix was -dale (referring to a valley or area surrounded by hills). I found one Farmersburg in Indiana and another in Iowa. The ending -burg, for example, is a Scottish variation of the word borough (which refers to a town). I also noticed Farmland (Indiana) and Farming (Minnesota). I found two towns simply designated Farmer (North Carolina and Ohio), FarmerвЂ™s Branch (Texas), Farmer City (Illinois), and FarmerвЂ™s Valley (Pennsylvania). In addition, farms, farmers, and farming featured prominently in place names without the -ville ending. Louisiana has a Farmerville, and seven states have towns called Farmersville (Alabama, California, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Texas). To satisfy my curiosity, I paged through a road atlas and opened Google Maps on my computer.ДЄlthough I found only the two communities in Virginia and North Carolina with the precise name Farmville, some others were remarkably close. I began to wonder about other towns where our nationвЂ™s agricultural history and heritage were made manifest in town names based on Farm-this and Farm-that. The town features a blend of historic homes and newer communities, boasts of its support for the arts and takes pride in a distinctive Main Street. For example, from the website of North CarolinaвЂ™s town (), I learned that its Farmville has a settlement history that dates back to the latter half of the 1700s. Farmville, VA and Farmville, N.C., seem to share a lot in common. ThereвЂ™s also a Farmville in North Carolina. Recently, I discovered that the name of our community here in Virginia isnвЂ™t unique. They told their readers about baseball players from вЂњsluggersvilleвЂќ and victors from вЂњwinnersville.вЂќ By the 1970s, business reporters had also embraced the practice, and they wrote about figurative places called вЂњmarketvilleвЂќ and вЂњmediaville.вЂќ A hundred years later, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary, sports writers adopted a similar method for coining allegorical terms.

The practice of naming towns with the suffix -ville (which is from the French word for village) was apparently popular in the United StatesвЂ™ post-revolution era. People who hold this misperception often feel disappointed when I confess that IвЂ™ve never played the game.ДЄnother group tends to interpret the name metaphorically. So, some people think I say I live in Farmville to indicate that I spend most of my waking hours at the computer sowing digital crops and milking avatars of cows. The year we moved to Farmville was the same year Zynga released its popular social network game, FarmVille. None guesses that Farmville is the true name of an actual place. W hen my husband and I tell people from other places that we live in Farmville, their reactions are typically based on one of two basic assumptions.

Happy farm ville