Sister Cities & Twin Towns Trivia Quiz

Answer: Spain

A historic port city on the Mediterranean, the name Alicante comes from the Arabic "Al-qant". The Carthaginians arrived by the 4th century BC where they founded the settlement of Akra Leuké ("white mountain"). The Romans displaced them during the Second Punic War, renaming the place Lucentum ("white"). Islamic rule began in 711 AD with the Al-qant name change. After the 13th century Reconquista expelling the Moors, Alicante went into decline. Since the 1950s, the tourism industry has wrought significant changes.

Answer: Slovakia

Capital of Slovakia, Bratislava sits on both sides of the Danube as well as on the left bank of the River Morova. It is unusual in being the only capital to sit on the border of two other countries, Austria and Hungary in this case. It was also capital of Hungary for nearly 250 years from 1536.

The place has known many names with the current name Bratislava being regarded as a misinterpretation of a mediaeval one.

Answer: United States

Cleveland, Ohio sits on the southern shore of Lake Erie on the Canadian-US maritime border. It was founded in 1796 by General Moses Cleaveland near the Cuyahoga River. Named after the General, there is a myth that the town name was shortened to fit a newspaper masthead. The completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal in 1832 saw the town grow rapidly through water-borne trade.

Answer: South Africa

Formerly called Port Natal, Durban is on the east coast of South Africa and the country's third largest city after Cape Town and Johannesburg. The 'Natal' name (meaning 'Christmas') came from the Portuguese explorer Vasca de Gama who saw the area on Christmas 1497.

It was not until 1823 when escaping a storm that there was British interest in the area. Trade relations were opened with the Zulu king and a trading station established after King Shaka granted the land in thanks for helping him recover from an assassination attempt.

In 1835 it became Durban, named after the Cape Colony governor Benjamin D'Urban.

Answer: South Korea

Settled since Neolithic times, there have been many name changes over the years. It has been called Incheon now for over 800 years with variations in spelling and size for various reasons including Japanese colonisation and, more recently, Romanization of the Korean alphabet.

It is one of the country's main port cities and lies on the north-western coast a few kilometres south-west of the capital Seoul.

Answer: Bulgaria

Kazanlak is a city in the middle of Bulgaria whose site has been occupied since Neolithic times with periods of Thracian and Ottoman rule. The modern city can be traced to a military fort built at the beginning of the 15th century, developing later as a city of craftsmen. It is a centre of rose oil extraction with the Damask rose grown there since Roman times.

Answer: Cyprus

Located on the south coast of the island of Cyprus, the local name Lemesos perhaps points to when it was built between the two ancient Greek city-kingdoms of Amathus and Kourion. The original name was Nemesos (meaning "one found in the middle"). Limassol played a part in the Third Crusade in 1190 with Richard the Lionheart ending the long Byzantine rule of the island when the local governor refused to contribute to the crusade.

It didn't help that the governor had earlier tried to take Richard's fiancée hostage for ransom.

The UK still has two British Overseas Territories on the island with one, Akrotiri, lying to the west of Limassol.

Answer: Serbia

Novi Sad (meaning "new plantation" in Serbian), second largest city in Serbia, was founded in 1694 on the opposite bank of the Danube from Petrovaradin Fortress after the Serbs were refused entry to Petrovaradin for religious reasons. Settled since at least Stone Age times, waves of invasions have swept through over the centuries with settlements coming and going.

The names of former villages within the city's footprint reflect a mix of Slavic and Hungarian heritage. The Serbs came with the Ottomans. Devasted during the 1848 revolutions in the Austrian Empire, it was rebuilt to become an industrial and financial centre.

Answer: Ukraine

Odesa (also spelt Odessa) is a major city in the south-west corner of Ukraine on the Black Sea coast. It acquired the Greek-inspired Odessa name in 1795 after being conquered as part of the "Greek Plan" advanced by Catherine the Great of Russia in the 1780s.

She envisaged the splitting of the Ottoman Empire between the Russian and Habsburg Empires and started a war to achieve this. The death of the Habsburg emperor and Napoleon's rise to power changed Austrian priorities.

Answer: Russia

Founded by Tsar Peter the Great of Russia in 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, Saint Petersburg sits at the head of the Gulf of Finland at the eastern end of the Baltic Sea. It was named after the apostle Saint Peter and was capital of Russia for around 200 years. With the start of the First World War, the name was changed to Petrograd to distance the city from the German-sourced words in the name. Lenin's death in 1924 saw a change to Leningrad but a referendum in 1991 saw a return to Saint Petersburg, although Leningrad remains the name for the surrounding region.