Renaming London?

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Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I just stumbled across this discussion. I'm actually quite surprised that basically everyone in this thread is cool with the status quo, and the only people bringing forth other ideas are doing so in jest.

To me, London was always a terribly unoriginal name for a large city. I'm glad Kitchener changed their name; it avoids confusion and removes the need to affix "Ontario" to the end of every statement involving the city. I think it's alright, though still ultimately silly, for smaller towns and cities (eg Paris, Ontario).

There was a discussion years ago in Edmonton about branding ourselves without affixing "Alberta" to the end, because we wanted to be able to market ourselves as a destination in and of itself, that people shouldn't need to have further clarification for. It seems like that attitude does not exist in London, where the provincial status quo is considered fine enough. Or am I missing something?

To those that say Dieppe or Halifax or wherever are also named for other places -- sure that's true. You can say the same for Edmonton and Calgary as well. But in all of those cases, the place they're named for is significantly smaller so as to avoid any sort of confusion. Nobody is unsure which Halifax you mean when you say you're going to Halifax. London? Not so much. Actually, no, they usually think you mean the English one. This seems to be a fundamental image problem for London, Ontario.

Frankly, I don't get why a place would like to basically exist as a reference to somewhere else, complete with same river and other place names (because may as well commit to the schtick). Maybe there's a different mentality in Southwestern Ontario, and I don't mean to come across as preachy, but I would think that a place like London would want to forge its own path rather than be in the shadow of the former colonial behemoth.