First Republic Bank Shares Sink 40% After Earnings Report

Until the end of the U.S. Civil War, there wasn't any federal bank regulation. (Congress tried, but they couldn't agree on anything after the charter for the United States' national bank expired in 1836; we didn't have a central bank again until 1913.) Banks even issued their own currency. Better banks made sure to be 100% capitalized so you could always redeem your currency in gold. Other banks didn't, so if they ran out of gold to satisfy redemption requests, they would go out of business. There was no FDIC, so depositors lost everything.

So anyway, there were a LOT of small banks. Most had state charters. In a given city, e.g. Cincinnati, the first bank that ever opened there called itself First Bank of Cincinnati. Subsequent banks were Second Bank of Cincinnati, Third Bank of..., Fourth Bank of..., Fifth Bank etc. That's how Fifth Third Bank got its original name. It was a merger of Fifth Bank of Cincinnati and Third Bank of Cincinnati. Fifth was bigger, so they decided to keep it first in the new name.

There's still a Second National Bank in Ohio, and there was a Fourth National Bank of Wichita until 1995. There was also a Fourth National Bank of New York City until 1905.

The negative connotations of being second-best are bad for branding, so I suspect that any bank that can't call itself "First Bank of..." because there already is one in the area, will just go with an entirely different name instead.