>That was exactly my point :)

Well, he did his best to help you make it :)

>If it is difficult to determine which ones are valid in New York State, were I bet there is some kind of database somewhere, imagine how difficult it would be to determine real cities in "La Rioja" province, or what about cities with alternative names, like Landgraaf/Schaesberg in Netherlands; or Kwimba/Sengerema in Tanzania, the list of problems goes on an on

And then there are cities with old/new names, which were renamed by political fiat or by will of their citizens, or such a decision was repealed - and for a number of years both names are in use.

Not that I'm expecting a flood of members from such cities, but since we're already discussing an abstract and pretty useless problem, I felt like contributing to...

...no I can't. This thread by definition can't suffer from thread drift. It was born there.