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We write New York as separate, not Newyork. But we write Newtown as compound noun and not separate. This is a problem in tests like IELTS. How do we know when to write the names separately?

Joe Simpson
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    Note that there are multiple places named "New Town" and some of them spell it as two words. There's no general English rule for this. I don't know if IELTS has some specific requirement, but it seems unfair for them to be testing on place names that aren't very well known or that have that sort of spelling ambiguity. – nnnnnn Feb 01 '20 at 07:19
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    I'm not aware of this being a problem on IELTS; in the Listening paper you are given the spelling. In the Reading paper, you just select the correct answer from a list. In the writing, part 1, Academic, the name of the cities (if the diagram or chart is comparing different cities in the world, their names are already written – Mari-Lou A Feb 01 '20 at 11:51
  • @nnnnnn There's one place in England that uses an exclamation mark in its official name. There was even one New York hotel which used the double hyphen (subtly different from the equals sign). – Edwin Ashworth Feb 01 '20 at 16:27

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Sorry Joe, you are being given a memory test. I don't think there is any shortcut way of figuring out how placenames should be written. For every Biggin Hill there's a Larkshill. You'll just have to spend more time with an atlas.

Kevin Ryan
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There are no ‘general rules’ for names, except that the namer gets to pick the name.

For example, those with the appropriate jurisdiction for naming streets can set aside even the usual punctuation conventions:

It was recently announced that Cambridge City Council will be omitting apostrophes in new Cambridge street names in line with national guidelines. - Cambridge Assessment English

If names were treated in a more regular fashion, “New York” might be capitalised as “new York”, in contrast to the pre-existing “York”. Likewise for “Northumberland” as opposed to, presumably, “north Umber land” or whatever its etymology might suggest.

Lawrence
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