Reading this post over at Eunomia, I was struck not only by its insight but by the fact that the Americans refer to their electoral districts by number: “Arizona 8th District”, “Nebraska 3rd District”, etc. I find this very confusing, since these names don’t give any hint where in the respective states the districts are. There is no way to know, without looking it up, whether a New York congressman for the Xth District represents the Upper East Side, the Bronx, or Buffalo. In addition, these number-names are dull and colourless. Maybe the practice reflects the numerological obsessions of the early U.S. Freemasons or something, but as a Canadian, I’d like to see some changes. ~Andrew Cunningham

My thanks to Andrew for the generous link and kind words.  I don’t think our district numbering has much to do with the Masons (though I expect someone has written a book informing us how the numbers of all the congressional districts add up to form the number of the Beast), but with the impressively pragmatic and unimaginative character of most Americans.  It is odd that a country that had its own lengthy bout of romanticism and a magnificent frontier that should have spawned a great outpouring of poetry gave us transcontinental railroads and dime novels.  I would be only too glad to change things up a bit and give our districts more geographically meaningful and aesthetically pleasing names.  In my home state, NM-01 could become Rio Abajo y Sandia, NM-02 to our south could become Tierra Amarilla and NM-03 to the north could be called New California in honour of our many new transplants.  Were we to follow the Quebec approach, we could have the districts of Coronado, William Bonney and Popé respectively.  Then again, we can barely agree on what to put on the backs of our commemorative state quarters.  Naming congressional districts might ignite street fighting.