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by kgwgk 2191 days ago
> Really the tristate area is what people mean when they say New England

Maybe they should be more careful with their choice of name, New England has been used for over 400 years to refer to something that definitely doesn’t include Manhattan or New Jersey.

The name even has a precise administrative meaning today, as does Middle Atlantic: https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/maps-data/maps/reference/us...

1 comments

Yeah, I agree it's technically not correct, but in the context of coronavirus specifically, much like COVID-19 is the disease and SARS-CoV-2 is the virus, but everyone calls it COVID, that's what people are referring to in my experience.

In other contexts New England is usually used correctly, though I have seen people include NY and/or the original 13 colonies as "New England"

That said I didn't know about the mid-atlantic administrative region, thanks for that info. It seems really weird to call NY, which borders Canada, mid-atlantic and have it stop at the south of NJ, especially when east north central goes further south. South atlantic looks about 2-3x bigger than mid and definitely goes way past the north-south halfway point of the east coast.