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Notes -
Bill Bryson described one aspect of American culture as "London, England" syndrome. American newspaper headlines tend to provide both the city and the country, whereas their British counterparts only provide the city. He used this to illustrate a point that Americans aren't stupider than Brits, but rather their culture is set up in such a way that they aren't required to expend mental effort on simple cognitive tasks in the way that citizens of other nations are. In other words, the brain is a muscle - don't exercise it, and it atrophies.
To be fair, though, North America has lots and lots of duplicate names, or duplicate-sounding names, for places (the majority of the states in the Union have a "Springfield"). No mandate for uniqueness between ~60 distinct polities and importing a bunch of people who decided to name things after the places they came from for some reason (when they weren't just calling them "New Whatever" in whatever their native language was; sometimes that got translated [New Mexico], sometimes it didn't [Nova Scotia], and rather humorously the former refers to a New World nation itself).
The same thing is true for London, to a degree; there are more than 5 cities and towns named that on the continent (and for bonus points, one of them is a relatively major city). Or Exeter: do you mean the one in NH, RI, Ontario, or the original one in the UK?
And the copying isn't even limited to Old World nations; does "Ontario, CA" refer to the province of Ontario, Canada? Or does it refer to the city of Ontario, in California? Did that event happen in Vancouver, BC; or was it Vancouver, WA? (Bonus points for being only a few hours away from other.) Which Grand Forks do you mean? And so on.
[Come to think of it, if Mexico was still called New Spain, would New Mexico have been called New New Spain? Newer Spain? If after that, an Iberian colony ship lands on a habitable planet would they call it Newest Spain? If they launched two would it be New Newest Spain?]
Sure, but I don't think this phenomenon is unique to the US. There are three towns called New York in the UK too.
Yes, but if any of those three places were referred to in anything other than hyper local media (perhaps the local radio station) then they'd be referred to as New York in North Yorkshire, for obvious reasons. Similarly, if a British press piece was covering something in London, Ontario, then I'd be nearly 100% sure that they'd refer to it as "London in Ontario" or "London, the city in Canada", again for self explanatory reasons.
(FWIW, I don't think that "New York, North Yorkshire" qualifies as a real place. There's an old mill, now with some other commercial uses, but it is at best a single road in Summerbridge. I was surprised as I have some familiarity with the area and had never heard of it.)
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Nova Scotia does have a lot of people of Scottish descent (including me), but it was actually given its name when the colony was granted to a Scottish Earl at a time when the inhabitants were all French or indigenous and 150 years before Scots began to settle there in significant numbers.
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