Portland

The meaning

“Land by the harbor”

How it got the name

Burned to the ground four separate times — by the Wampanoag, the Abenaki, the French, and finally the Royal Navy in 1775 — the town was reincorporated in 1786 as Portland, after the Dorset peninsula whose quarries supplied the stone for St. Paul's Cathedral. The city's motto, Resurgam, means 'I shall rise again.'

Former names

1. Casco
2. Falmouth
3. Machigonne (Abenaki)
4. Portland