Figure 4.19: Generic place names reveal the migration of Yankee New Englanders and the spread of the Northern dialect. Two of the most typical place name characteristics in New England are the use of Center in the names of the principal settlements in a political subdivision and the tendency to duplicate the names of local towns and villages by adding the prefixes East, West, North, and South to the subdivision’s name. As the concentration of such place names suggests, these two Yankee traits originated in Massachusetts, the first New England colony. Note how these toponyms moved westward with New England settlers but thinned out rapidly to the south, in areas not colonized by New Englanders.