We have all grown accustomed to the town names around where we live in East Lancs, but there are many other settlements across the world that share those names.

According to the website Geotargit, there are 18 places around the world called Blackburn, spread across five different countries.

Lancashire Telegraph: Blackburn, OklahomaBlackburn, Oklahoma (Image: Google Streetview)

It also records four different places called Burnley, but just the one Accrington, right here in East Lancashire.

There are 11 places named Blackburn in the USA, four in the UK, one in South Africa, one in New Zealand, and one in Australia.

Blackburn USA Locations

  • West Virginia
  • Utah
  • Pennsylvania
  • Oklahoma
  • North Carolina
  • Nevada
  • Missouri
  • Louisiana
  • Kentucky
  • Arkansas
  • Alabama

In the UK, the other three Blackburns are in Rotherham, Aberdeenshire, and West Lothian.

The one in South Africa is in Kwa-Zulu-Natal, on the outskirts of Durban, New Zealand’s Blackburn is in Hawke’s Bay, and the one in Australia is a suburb of Melbourne in Victoria.

The lone Burnley in the USA is located in Virginia, 107 miles from Washington DC and around 300 miles from the Blackburn in North Carolina – roughly a five-hour drive.

Burnley in South Africa is in the Eastern Cape, and Australia’s is also a suburb of Melbourne, around 20km from the Blackburn suburb and on the same line of the city’s rail network.

Lancashire Telegraph: Burnley, Melbourne, AustraliaBurnley, Melbourne, Australia (Image: Google Streetview)

The website also records just one place named Darwen, though there are 13 spelt as ‘Darwin’, most notably the major city in Australia’s Northern Territory.

There are a massive 36 places worldwide called Nelson, with the most being in the USA (25), and including Cuba, Argentina, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Colne has two, here in Lancashire and one in Cambridgeshire, while Lancs is also home to the only Clitheroe, Padiham, and Haptons in the world.