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Comment by qubex | Hacker News Reader

Side note: as a non-American, it's hilarious (and sometimes slightly irritating) to read place names in the <City>,<Country> format usually used by Americans (albeit in <City>,<State>).

Firstly, pretty much everybody I know is aware that Marlborough is a city in the UK. There's even a famous historical figure, the Duke of Marlborough, associated with the place.

Secondly it kind of indicates that at some level the writer believes that US states and foreign countries are similar organisational units, when actually countries have greater independence and sovereignty than do US states.

It's certainly illustrative and useful for a wider audience, but... I dunno... it still feels... a bit wrong.

(And yeah, there's probably a Marlborough somewhere in the US so American citizens might get confused, but that's kind of the point too... like when I say “I'm from Milan” and I get “oh, Milan, Texas?” back as a reply. “No ma’am, Milan, Italy.”)

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I'm from the UK. My home address is in Bangor, Northern Ireland. Almost every employer (in the UK) I've interviewed at initially thought I was Welsh.

If I say "I'm from Bangor" to an American and they assume I'm American, which one of these would they think I'm referring to?[0] There are two separate Bangor Townships in Michigan alone.

It makes total sense to refer to the country and city/town when you are addressing an international audience.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangor#United_States_of_Americ...

Yes, you are correct. I apologise to you too. I was a bit testy this morning and I came off a more ill-tempered and quarrelsome person than I had intended, and it is entirely my fault.

When I see Bangor, I think of Bangor, Maine! Their police department's Facebook page has a huge following for being really funny and wholesome, I follow it even though I've never been there. It's really cute.

Hi Qubex,

OP here, also non-American (and, incidentally, British!)

It occurred to me that suffixing the name with the country would probably be a helpful annotation considering that the US is "Marlboro Country".

Hello there. I am also British (and Italian, but I digress).

You are correct that it was useful, and I did not wish to detract from the utility of denoting where in the world Marlborough is. I merely took the opportunity to air one of my pet peeves about what could be, by some, in some sense, seen as the adoption of an inherently American norm.

I tend to get rankled by things like that first thing on a Monday morning. I really apologise if it came off more cantankerous than I intended.

Fair enough - I get rankled by encroaching Americanisms, too. Particularly when our son says "parking lot" or "sidewalk" after too many hours on YouTube.

The struggle is real!

TBH, American states were supposed to be much more like sovereign nations than they are currently, so the construction feels completely natural to me.

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