Where are you from, where are you staying, have you been before, what do you like doing, do you drink, are you with anybody, etc, etc?

I lived in upstate New York, about an hour train ride north of the city

When I say moved here from New York, others immediately default to the city.

There is a lot more to New York than the city. 😸

They're coming from Victoria.

Bit out of the way for a trip from Victoria to Portland.

Not at all. You can tell what is meant by the context.

I definitely agree with this. While the Highway 16 to I-5 route is faster, the Hood Canal route is way more scenic and has a great view.

*the South East Asian community in Seattle has been comedically dealing with this for years.

In my college on the east coast not a single person knew where Microsoft is located, let alone what Redmond is

Well, Washington D.C. was named in 1801, while Washington State wasn't named until 1889. So the men who chose to name this state for George Washington should have known it was a recipe for endless confusion. Maybe they should have named the state Tahoma, the indigenous name for Mt. Rainier. It means "mother of waters", which is a very nice image.

Lol, yes, and growing up in Seattle I was very confused by the Cap Hill references.

Yeah, I'm from the Tri-Cities, and explaining to people that I'm from "the desert part of Washington" has always gotten so many confused looks.

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Sounds good, consider skimming this at some point in the meantime

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

Which makes no sense. DC is shorter to say to get the point across. Washington is shorter to say than Washington state to get the point across. Maybe I should start adding state to every states name so people hear how ridiculous is sounds to say something like Texas State. Sounds more like a university. We have one we call Washington state.

Lol when we were in Italy, Italians would ask where we were from. We would say Spokane Washington. They would look at us confused. So then we would say “a few hours from Seattle” and they would go “oh, where greys anatomy is!!” I was like yep?? This happened multiple times in various cities in Italy and I thought it was really strange that that was what Seattle was known for not Amazon, Microsoft, etc, but grey’s anatomy. Lol it must be a popular show over there I guess.

>"Have you been to the White House?"

I've never past many white houses.

When I say Washington .. I add state at the end.

I was told growing up that when breaking off from Oregon they originally were going to call the new territory Columbia, but thought that it would be confusing because DC at the time was known as the District of Columbia.

Yup always takes a min to process.

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I’m originally from New York, where DC was always Washington or Washington, DC, and the state was always Washington State.

Yes, that is another one that gets under my skin!

My news app does this.

they originally wanted to name the state Columbia (its next to British Columbia and has that river of the same name) but then they changed it to Washington because they thought that Columbia was too easily confused with the District of Columbia

Yes of course but it's not happening. In Vancouver, four stories max with no accompanying infrastructure improvements.