Timbuktu? Never quite abandoned, but certainly a shadow of itself when it was the centre of a huge and powerful empire.

Constantinople--it begins with a "C" and it was a great city, a crossroads.

Pachacamac maybe?

I haven't been there but I understand that there's still a small village there.

Newton, MA. And many other Newtons.

Ha, yes, of course. I think Dave has it. So, Kota Bharu, Malaysia. According to Wikipedia, anyway.

Yup, Dave has it. Those were the two least transparent ones I could come up with (more obvious ones being, eg, Novgorod or Naples), but Kota Bharu is excellent.

Pondicherry, India; arguably Novosibirsk, Russia; and maybe even Neuchâtel, Switzerland?

And, naturally, New City, New York, USA. Talk about your uncreative names.

(This page was a lot of help.)

There're a fair number of Villeneuves in France and Switzerland. (In Brittany too, so a Kernevez as well.)

Villanova, Pennsylvania.

Bagumbayan in the province of Sultan Kudarat in the Philippines. There are also several Bagumbayans which are barangays (villages) within some municipalities throughout the country.

--Chris

There's a French prose-poem about a very old Pont Neuf by Aloysius Bertrand, though I don't have it here.

Maybe this is what John is thinking of:

" N'importe ! dit-il un peu confus, Chateauneuf et
Chateauvieux ne sont qu'un même château. Aussi bien il
est temps de débaptiser le Pont-Neuf. "

Waiter, a magnum of Châteauneuf du Pape for the table!

After posting last night, I looked for more examples with Google (I was hoping to find one that began with C... no luck). Those not mentioned above include (allegedly):
Geni Shehir (or Yenişehir -Turkish name for Larissa, Greece, and old name for Çankaya, a district of Ankara)
Navekat (Sogdian city near Krasnaya Rechka, Kyrgyzstan)
Nevsehir (Nevşehir, Turkey)
Nowshera (Pakistan)
Shahr-i-Naw (a district of Kabul, and in the 14th century a town near Pandua, West Bengal)

Then, of course, there's Cartagena, originally Carthago Nova - a nice torpenhowe.

Cartaghe is the roman name for Qart Hadast.
There are plenty Villanueva and Vilanovas in spanish and portuguese toponymy.

Thans Cassian!

Jim just beat me on my attempted one up on Cartagena, but I'll do it in triplicate with Nueva Cartagena FC. I suppose the "a" is all that is left from Punic and the "na" from Latin. Do you happen to know if Cartagena came to be Cartagena through an Arabic intermediary toponym - like Caesaraugusta > Saraqusta > Zaragoza?

In Dalmatia: Novigrad (not far away is Starigrad).

In Hercegovina: Herceg Novi

In Bosnia: Bosanski Novi.

In Italy: Napoli

In Sydney there has been a Newtown for years, so when they developed a new suburb recently they called it Newington.

Qart-Hadasch "new city", Colonia Urbs Iulia Nova Carthago, Qartayannat al- Halfa, Qartayanna, Cartagena.

Newcastle? (No, too obvious).

How about Novy Sad?

Ujlengyel or Ujpuszta. Both small though.

.

Or Nieuwstad in Groningen. Is there a lower size limit?

.

New Munich, Minesota, pop. 213.

Nova Scotia.

Newmarket (UK, Canada, etc.)

There's also a town called Novo mesto ("new town") in Slovenia.

how about (pardon my uneducated transcription) Nizhnij Novgorod? I once heard, I believe, that this means "New New City", but they/I may have been mistaken. . . .

No, I'm afraid it means 'lower new city'; there is considerable controversy over what it's lower than (perhaps the town of Gorodets), or whether it's simply on the lower reaches of the river.

Newstead.

新竹市, in Taiwan.

http://www.hccg.gov.tw/

Which is Hsinchu in the official transliteration (Wikipedia entry). But it means 'new bamboo,' and I was really looking for names that mean 'new city' or 'new town.' I suppose the Chinese would be Xincheng (Hsin-ch'eng); there are a few places of that name, but I don't know if the last character is the one for 'city.'