As a result of the habit of renaming places and changing administrative districts, does history every fall through the cracks? Are there cases where historians believed an old city was at location X, which matches the name today, but then it was later discovered that it was actually originally at place Y? I'll give an example in my own area to illustrate my meaning.
After the Jin conquest of the Northern Song, the was relocated south, eventually settling in Lin'an, now called Hangzhou. Today, Hangzhou is a city of substantial size, and Lin'an is the name of a city to the west of Hangzhou. They are two different places, the latter having taken the old name of the former. I was listening to the latest China History Podcast and he says the Song moved to Lin'an, "outside Hangzhou". But this is not correct as far as I know. They moved to Lin'an, which is now called Hangzhou, and there just happens to be another place now called Lin'an which is not where the Song set up their palace.
Now as a result you have people saying things like the Song weren't in what's now Hangzhou (in the narrow urban area definition). It's easy enough to find out that that's not true for that example, but are there other cases where we just don't know where an old city really was because of this sort of thing?
I searched for this but didn't find anything, and I may also be searching for the wrong terms. So if there's already a post about this, I missed it, but would be happy to have someone direct me to it.
There is one researcher who suggests that the hanging gardens of Babylon were not in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar that we thought. Instead she proposes that after the Assyrians conquered "old" Babylon they renamed their city of Nineveh to Babylon and adopted some of the defining characteristics of the old city and added the hanging gardens.
It's sort of an example of what you're talking about, but historically Troy was at two separate locations, Homeric Troy and Classical Troy. They're very close to each other and technically part of the same archaeological site, but they're far enough apart that they can be seen as two separate sites of settlement.
Here's the thing. The Bronze Age site of Troy that we all know was continuously inhabited long before the destruction of Troy VIIA. The layers from Troy I to Troy VII are more or less superimposed directly on top of each other, in continuous building. After VIIA the city is rebuilt, however, slightly to the east of the old city. The original Troy VIII site only barely overlapped the older sites of Troy in a small section of its outer walls, although when the city expanded and was made a colony under Augustus it grew significantly and the resulting outer buildings overlap the older sites all over the place. But the city that Xerxes and Alexander visited was, although part of the same archaeological site, still not a part of the original site of the city, but was centered something like a mile away from the old center. The identification of the site was lost during the Middle Ages and for a long time it was assumed that the site of Classical Troy (which was unidentified) could not possibly have been the site of Homeric Troy since it was presumed that nobody could've resettled it after its sack. It was therefore believed throughout much of the 18th and early 19th Centuries that the site of Classical Troy was miles and miles away from the old city. This may have stemmed from the custom of the Classical Trojans to bring tourists to a nearby site which they claimed was where all the battles were fought.
I know it happens in Anglo-Saxon history, thought not in the same manner. The cities didn't undergo drastic name changes so much as translations went awry. Occasionally in translations even respected scholars will confuse Chester and Leicester in Anglo-Saxon documents, to the point where what they are translating would mean an army is heading in a completely different direction. The mistake is somewhat understandable as in Old English the two are rather similar. Chester was known as Legacaestir and Leicester was known as Ligeraceaster. Both had rather variable spelling, so the confusion becomes worse as the spelling becomes more similar. I've found this mistake most commonly in translations of The Mercian Register, which is found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Sometimes translators will mistake the 918 reference for Chester as opposed to Leicester. If this were the case, the Mercian army was traipsing all over England as opposed to a firm push north into Danelaw.
Part of your question is actually philosophical, with regards to city continuity, and whether continuity is entirely bound by physical location, as opposed to continuity of services and population, or even whether there's any actual continuity at all and the selection of the name was simply to reaffirm legitimacy and continuity where none previously existed.
For example, both Luoyang and Changan are not in the exact same location as they were in Han times. Han-Wei Luoyang is actually located in an empty farm field east of the city, whereas Han Changan is in a less populated northwest quadrant of the modern city. Both Han cities were eventually sacked and burnt to the ground, with the rebuild elsewhere as a sign of the "rebirth" of new dynasties.
So if there was an extended discontinuity of urban inhabitation within a city site like Changan, is it the same city, between Han and Tang? Or Tang and now? Good question.
Personally, I think its a matter of definitions, as to what you view continuity is, which is why I stated at the beginning the options (between physical, socio-economic, and political). Cities (especially in China) are more than urban environments, they're legacies and legitimacy of the reigning government as the holders of Chinese "civilization", which is quite often defined by its urbanness.
So because of this, sometimes only one definition is employed in defining a city, even though all three are possibilities. So whether these historical cities are "misplaced" is a moot point because they represent continuity, despite arguments (be they physical or socioeconomic) that they aren't continuous.
The analogy of the survival of the Roman Empire as the Byzantine Empire comes into mind, with regards to the question of continuity. Does it matter that the Byzantine Empire did not occupy the same physical space as the core of the old Roman Empire, despite its cultural and political continuity?
In the end, you can really argue it both ways. Which is why I would say you can argue it both ways for the placement of Chinese cities. They might be considered misplaced, or they might be considered right where they need to be.