You’ll see banks called “First National Bank of X”, or the “First Baptist Church of Y”. A bank or church, with the exact same name, will also exist somewhere else. I live and have traveled all over the US (specifically the Bible Belt) for years now and I’ve noticed this trend.
What gives? Maybe the answer is really obvious and I can’t put it together.
Edit: How come you almost never see the “Second National Bank/Church of X/Y”?
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To give a local anecdotal example, the Midwest US Baptist church that I used to attend is approaching its 200th anniversary as a congregation, which is pretty damn old for a US church. The congregation began as a house church in the early 1800s and met in a local barn, and was named as the “Baptist Church of _____ and ______ Township”. In about 1825 the nearby village, which was founded by transplanted New Englanders, established their “village green” and designated the 4 corners of the green as land owned by the village where churches would be built for the good of the community, similar to the village greens in New England.
The First Baptist Church, First Presbyterian Church, First Methodist Church and First Episcopal Church were built over the next 10 years, as money was raised by the congregations to hire preachers and build the churches. More than just reflecting “naming rights,” the names reflect the pride of the community at reaching the milestone that they had grown to the point that they could support those four congregations. In the 1800s the churches were literally at the center of the growth of the town – they created the local men’s and women’s colleges (now merged into a nationally recognized university), were the meeting places for village business, and remain important local institutions. Even in larger cities it’s likely that the city grew from a bunch of small neighborhoods, and sometimes that “First Church of Bob” was founded by the neighborhood as a proud sign that the community had grown large enough to support a gathering place of their own.
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