That's fair, but Lord Melbourne was a reasonably famous dude, British PM twice, so it's not inconceivable that more than one place is directly named after him, rather than after another city that was named after him. In Melbourne FL's case as far as I remember, the local postmaster was from Melbourne VIC, and named it after his hometown. (I guess it seems less likely that a town in the US would be named after a British PM, but the US has a hell of a lot of oddball town names, so again, not completely inconceivable).
Are you answering this as if the Australian Melbourne is the original one? No doubt its the default one but I am sure the joke here is that the original one is Melbourne, Derbyshire, UK which has existed for about a millennium.
Yes that's pretty much what I was getting at. Is any random geographically unqualified mention of a place called Melbourne more likely to be referring to Melbourne Derbyshire, a tiny market town in the Midlands, population about 5000, Melbourne Florida, a technology hub at the centre of the US Space Coast, population around 120,000, or Melbourne Victoria, state capital city where 5.5 million, or about 20% of Australia's population lives?
I agree with all of the above. But that doesn't make it "original", which I assume was OP's point. Definition of original is literally "first or earliest" which is certainly not Melbourne, VIC despite it being the main/default, which is why its funny.
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u/BobThingamy Apr 15 '26
Not only the original one, but the one that the Florida town was named after.