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markkur
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posted May 31, 2014 03:24 PM |
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Edited by markkur at 15:40, 01 Jun 2014.
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Place Names
Thought I'd share something I think fun about place-names.
The world was explored long ago and today there are no new places to <ahem> discover. Today we live in an age where we are bombarded with advertising names that are all about sounding trendy to compel us to buy a company product. Due to those obvious facts (and others) are we numb to the old place-names around where we live? Have we collectively grown cold in our thoughts to the words that identify locations on a map?
The professor J.R.R.Tolkien once said; “a name can tell a story.” Most of us know that’s true to some extent but are we aware of the names around us? Is it possible for us to feel connected to a place-name like our predecessors? Can a name still conjure an image or has our ‘modern-thinking’ taken the magic out of our countryside?
When I read the Lord of the Rings my first thought when I finished the book was “Whew! that guy Tolkien had one heck of an creative mind.” At that time, I believed he invented everything in Middle-earth, which also included all of those incredible (and consistent) place-names; all were born entirely in his imagination.
I discovered later that my assumption was incorrect, he did have a wonderful imagination but he also possessed an incredible ’tool-box’ of historical information. He had much more going for him than only a great imagination, he had decades of learning. His knowledge covered a vast landscape of myth, poetry, history and his life-work delved into word-origin and meaning. The teacher also enjoyed maps of all kinds. To my next point.
When I began writing I picked lands that I was not familiar. England, Scotland and Wales were my backdrops. Since I didn’t know those regions and didn’t want to create everything out of the thin-air, this lead me to find existing maps to use.
I now know that my decision led me down the very same path that JRRT took many years ago. I realize this is true because in my search, I met many of the place names that are in his works. Now to my reason for the post.
I have been looking across detailed maps for years now and still greatly enjoy the effort. I think that since I was looking at places I didn’t know and also sought names that “sounded-magical” or might make the reader “feel the magic,” I became more aware of the power of words in general. In other words, I saw the magic that names on the map once held. Actually more than that, because I also saw many reasons regarding why a location was named. As I look at place-names now, history unfolds again. Because when you scan a modern map there remains recorded voices from the past. In northern England there are echoes from the native Britain, the Anglo-Saxon and the Norse and together they created the following list. I’ve organized them under a sort of origin or purpose.
Northumberland Names
Some names sound current: like Hallyburton and WaterGate but I’ll start with Colors: BlueGrass, GreenGlade, BlackSike, Whitefell, BrownMoor, RedScar, GoldenMea and GreyRiggHead.
Next, the Obvious: BogEnd, StoneRidge, MossEdge, Brakenside, GrassLea, SandyFord, LimestoneBanks, GreatMoor, AshTrees, PastureHill&PloughLands and SaughTree.
Rough-Terrain: HardAcres, BushyGrip, BrierRidge, MuddyGill, RoughSideMoor and ThornyClose.
Food: CornAcres, PeasMeadows, CherryHall, BerryHill, BarleyHill, ThistleTon, RyeHill, CranberryBrow and HoneyMoor.
Animals: Lambend, HorseRidge, HenHill, Mousen, WhinnyHouse, EweHill, RamsHope, (the last two side by side) FoxStone, Bovington, BoarStone, Pigdon, ,GreyMareHill, HamsterLea, (hmm, a herd of hamsters?)BullPot, HawksHeath, OxenHurst and last but not least E&W "ritch w/B"Field.
Puzzling: ColdHarbour (not near water), BlowWeary, Barnyard (in the sea?) Bickerton, (argue-town)Unthank(twice) and good ol’ shyttleHope. (just to be clear, the first is I for y)
How about Strange: LadyFlat, Turnstoop, PotsClose, BellButts, PigleHole, Mugglewick. MountHooly and let’s all go to CarryCoatesHall (too hot?), BarfHill,(never I say!) LowButcherRace? (Hmm, maybe…Slow instead?), and then theres Blinkbonny which is so important there‘s an East,West and Middle? Finally how about…BoozeWood & ButterStone(too much ale I think)
Some names sound Pious: Eden, (Sure pal) CrossHill, MonkRidge, FriarsWell, TheGlebe, PriestHill,and Jerusalem.(I bet) While others are Spooky or Evil: The WitchesKnowe, (they know what?)Devil'sLapful, Giant'sGrave, BogleHouses, BrownySide, (no, not the treat)HagDen, NetherHouses, Fiendsdale, Killing Hall (don’t‘ visit)
Then there are place-names that make a Statement: “Steps of Grace” “StandAlone” “FoulPlayKnowe” “MakeEmRitch” “Doctor'sGate” “MiddleGoldenPot” “OhMeEdge” and we mustn’t forget “LongMegAndHerDaughters”
I like the Whimsical: Butcher'sCoat, Windywalls, SkirlNaked,(gotta be fun) SillyWray, PityMe, TootleHall (where old farts go?)and a WigglesWorth.
And now to the Tolkien-like: GlitteringStone, HarBottle, WetWang, SilverSide, BlueStone, WoodEnd & Underwood, Underhill & OvertheHill, BrandyWell, The Lune, Fingall and Mythholme.
I end my trip at one last oddity: MickleFell is a high Peak that stand at 2591. Next to this mountain is a spot called “BoatofMickleFell.” (righty-ho)
Hope you enjoyed the trip and had a laugh.
Markkur
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artu
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posted May 31, 2014 04:09 PM |
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Edited by artu at 16:15, 31 May 2014.
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Turkey is terribly confusing regarding this, since in the early days of the Republic both the nationalist ideology and the reaction of the founders to the Ottoman dynasty and heritage led to many provinces and villages to be renamed. They gave Turkish names to everything. Historians here say they sometimes go crazy trying to figure out which village is it that they trace out in some old document. And when it comes to street names and stuff, we have this awful tradition, where every political party renames them according to their ideology (like if the street is named after a leftist poet, a conservative party changes it to some Navy Commander from 17th century, then the Kemalists come and change it into something else, etc etc.) Many years ago, I was in Italy, walking with my mother, searchin for an address and we couldnt find it no matter what. So, the first thing that came to my mind was "maybe, they changed the street name" and my mother was like "this is Italy, son, they dont constantly rename their streets."
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Lord_Woock
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posted May 31, 2014 05:57 PM |
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Yeah, quite a bunch of street names were changed in Poland as well following the fall of communism in 1989. Some of the signs in my home town were left hanging for over a decade afterwards, for no reason at all.
And about names that tell stories, here's one I find amusing: there's a mountain on the Scottish Isle of Arran called Goat Fell (or Goatfell, depending where you look). Why? Is it so steep that even goats can't keep their footing?
EDIT: Okay, apparently fell just means mountain. I like my version better.
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markkur
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posted June 01, 2014 04:05 PM |
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Edited by markkur at 16:07, 01 Jun 2014.
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Artu said:
Many years ago, I was in Italy, walking with my mother, searchin for an address and we couldnt find it no matter what. So, the first thing that came to my mind was "maybe, they changed the street name" and my mother was like "this is Italy, son, they dont constantly rename their streets."
That story really makes your point about Turkey.  In the U.K (not Ireland so much) centuries of warfare caused the wealth of place names we have today. That Documentary on English told that story well.
Are there names in Turkey like in the list I shared or are things more serious in tone/meaning?
Lord_Woock said:
Yeah, quite a bunch of street names were changed in Poland as well following the fall of communism in 1989. Some of the signs in my home town were left hanging for over a decade afterwards, for no reason at all.
What did you think when you saw that stuff as a child? Here in the states we have evidence of conquest of course, i.e. French and Spanish names mixed-in with a lot of American-Indian, what you describe sounds grim to me for some reason. Sort of like dead-things hanging in the air.
Lord_Woock said:
And about names that tell stories, here's one I find amusing: there's a mountain on the Scottish Isle of Arran called Goat Fell (or Goatfell, depending where you look). Why? Is it so steep that even goats can't keep their footing?
EDIT: Okay, apparently fell just means mountain. I like my version better.
I do too. Maybe that's why "fell" came to mean mountain; cause it's hard to stand on the things and easy to...fell<L> For a long time I thought Wold meant a small wood but that's not quite correct it means copses of trees scattered about open land. The odd name in Scotland for me was Rig. Hmm, the modern oil-platform-corruption I guess<L>
@All
I didn't mention Hero-names in N.England but there are ofc several places identified with Robin Hood i.e. Bay, Woods, Hill and Well are there places where you live where a name is given for a folk-Hero?
Also I would be interested to know if whatever the native tongue, if place-names would translate and be similar to my U.K. list.
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artu
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posted June 01, 2014 04:38 PM |
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Quote:
Are there names in Turkey like in the list I shared or are things more serious in tone/meaning?
Well, since this place is like the cradle of many many civilizations, the real old names are in forgotten dead languages or they transformed so much over the centuries, it's impossible to recognize them without an etymological dictionary. Anatolia itself is from Ancient Greek, meaning Realm of East (cause it was in the east to them) but today when someone says Anadolu in Turkish, they have usually no idea what it means. Some even think it literally means Ana - dolu (translates as "Full of mothers") referring to many mothers who lost their sons over ages of warfare.
I have a book of an Armenian-descent writer who tries to trace back original village names and so on, called "Dictionary of Locations in Turkey" but mostly, you can't understand the meaning of the words.
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markkur
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posted June 02, 2014 04:31 PM |
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Edited by markkur at 16:32, 02 Jun 2014.
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artu said:
Well, since this place is like the cradle of many many civilizations, the real old names are in forgotten dead languages or they transformed so much over the centuries, it's impossible to recognize them without an etymological dictionary. Anatolia itself is from Ancient Greek, meaning Realm of East (cause it was in the east to them) but today when someone says Anadolu in Turkish, they have usually no idea what it means. Some even think it literally means Ana - dolu (translates as "Full of mothers") referring to many mothers who lost their sons over ages of warfare.
Yeah I bet in your part of the world it would be very difficult to trace-names back thru time. It seems like some place might always be called the same due to a prominent land feature or something.
Interesting. The "full of mothers" is definitely possible since many locations were named by statements regarding aftermath of battle. i.e. The battle of Hastings was actually fought on a site now called Battle; the French-name translates "hill of blood" Even in more recent years like the American Civil war, places were tagged by a "result of battle" like "Bloody Lane."
artu said:
I have a book of an Armenian-descent writer who tries to trace back original village names and so on, called "Dictionary of Locations in Turkey" but mostly, you can't understand the meaning of the words.
I have a guess, that the earliest place-names in any language would follow the simple pattern I posted from the U.K. Names born from the need to tell others how to travel to a spot & with land features the easiest way to mark; I think this would be universal. Even in the 1990s I lived in an area with no street names and to give directions I had to say stuff like; Go past the large-pond on the right and turn north on the gravel road, there's a big wood you'll see and then you'll see a large old barn turn east, you'll pass a cornfield, third house on the right.
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artu
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posted June 02, 2014 05:21 PM |
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It's very probable some of the old names meant stuff like "Green Lake" or "Foggy Hill" etc etc. However, I dont have the knowledge to present that for I dont know anything about Hittite or Phoenician or Sumerian language. Besides, sometimes they are simply named after kings that rule.
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JoonasTo
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posted June 02, 2014 09:25 PM |
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Finland has a lot of different names coming from Swedish, Russian and Sami languages.
Being a bi-lingual(or tri-lingual at parts) places have 2 or 3 names that don't necessarily have anything to do with each other.
A lot of places like "Savonlinna" "The Castle of Savo" in Finnish, "Nyslott" "Newcastle" in Swedish.
There are a lot of offending placenames too. Because the Russians went around making maps and asking "What's the name of that?" the Finns often just made something up so "shitpond"s and the like are pretty common.
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markkur
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posted June 03, 2014 04:05 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
Finland has a lot of different names coming from Swedish, Russian and Sami languages.
Being a bi-lingual(or tri-lingual at parts) places have 2 or 3 names that don't necessarily have anything to do with each other.
A lot of places like "Savonlinna" "The Castle of Savo" in Finnish, "Nyslott" "Newcastle" in Swedish.
Well, that is different. Why did places have to mean different things?
I ask because, in my example; Britain was fought over many times and yet the names in any language usually referred to the same thing. i.e. "Hill" in three different languages name the same spot Brea+Don+ Hill. I think I have an idea but would rather have you explain.
JoonasTo said:
There are a lot of offending placenames too. Because the Russians went around making maps and asking "What's the name of that?" the Finns often just made something up so "shitpond"s and the like are pretty common.
Are those places part of Finland today?
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Nitramar
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posted June 03, 2014 05:49 PM |
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Edited by Nitramar at 18:13, 03 Jun 2014.
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markkur said:
Well, that is different. Why did places have to mean different things?
I think there are many reasons.
Some times the name of a larger area has just been taken from one of the smaller places near it if there already happened to be one in that language. That is: if there were a Swedish speaking village/estate and another Finnish speaking one in roughly the same area, those two different places might have given the Swedish and Finnish names of the whole area, respectively. I don't think that's the case with Savonlinna/Nyslott, though. In some places one of the names seems to be just made up later on because there "has to be" a name in both languages. Notable example Karkkila/Högfors: Högfors means "high stream" in swedish while Karkkila pretty much means "candy town" in modern finnish, although google tells me it originally derived from a german man's first name.
Finnish and Swedish are also very different languages to begin with, which means that some direct translations would just sound too silly in one language. For example Savonlinna would directly translate to "Savolaxslott" which is long and awkward to pronounce because of the x followed by s (the Swedish name Nyslott might have existed before the Finnish one, though, so this might not apply in this particular case).
And lastly, one possible reason is just that Swedish used to be our only official language so nobody cared about the Finnish names (only peasants used those), and so place names in the two languages have simply evolved separately.
Oh, and by the way, even the whole country is called "Finland" in Swedish and "Suomi" in Finnish, again, completely unrelated  .
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markkur
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posted June 04, 2014 01:55 PM |
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Nitramar said:
... means "candy town" in modern Finnish, although google tells me it originally derived from a German man's first name.
TY for the good explanation my friend. So Candy was a dudes name? Must have been a sweet man
Here in the States folk had an unusual opportunity; they were able to pick old world names (hometowns)to name their new settlements. "New England"<L> is full of New "something", like New York, New Hampshire, New Britain, New Jersey etc.
Here in the Midwest the ideas went silly. In my state of Missouri there are towns called Mexico, Paris and Carthage and iirc Rome too.
Nitramar said:
Oh, and by the way, even the whole country is called "Finland" in Swedish and "Suomi" in Finnish, again, completely unrelated .
That's bizarre to me for some reason. So do Finns call themselves Finns or is that a Swedish tag entirely?
Btw, Have you and Joonas met yet? If I could I'd buy you both a frothing tankard of something yummy and we'd speak HoMMish & Kalevalacan.
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Nitramar
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posted June 04, 2014 04:21 PM |
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Edited by Nitramar at 16:24, 04 Jun 2014.
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Quote:
So Candy was a dudes name? Must have been a sweet man
No , that "dude" probably had some German name that didn't work in Finnish and therefore got distorted into a more familiar word that sounded loosely similar (and I'm not sure if that word already even meant "candy" at that time). I did like 3 minutes of research on this particular name's origin so don't trust me too much on that anyway.
Quote:
That's bizarre to me for some reason. So do Finns call themselves Finns or is that a Swedish tag entirely?
A Finn is "suomalainen" in Finnish and "en finne/finländare" in Swedish. Originally, "Finland" used to mean just the south-western part of modern Finland, an area (formerly a province) which is now called "Finland Proper" (Varsinaissuomi/ Egentliga Finland).
Quote:
Btw, Have you and Joonas met yet? If I could I'd buy you both a frothing tankard of something yummy and we'd speak HoMMish & Kalevalacan.
I have like 20 (Edit: 32) posts on HC since I registered in 2011. Soo... I don't think Joonas knows me unless he lurks at that EE forums as much as I do over here .
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JoonasTo
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posted June 04, 2014 04:33 PM |
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markkur said:
Here in the Midwest the ideas went silly. In my state of Missouri there are towns called Mexico, Paris and Carthage and iirc Rome too.
That's bizarre to me for some reason. So do Finns call themselves Finns or is that a Swedish tag entirely?
Btw, Have you and Joonas met yet? If I could I'd buy you both a frothing tankard of something yummy and we'd speak HoMMish & Kalevalacan.
I know a place in Finland where you can find Paris and Egypt in a 20km radius. Totally in the middle of nowhere.
You have to first realise that Finnish is more closely related to fricking Japanese than it is to Swedish. A lot of words are shared because of close proximity but communication with Finnish and Swedish is impossible. It's not related to the indo-european languages like almost every other language in Europe.
If you come to Finland, be sure to give me a call beforehand, I'll see what I can do. ^^
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markkur
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posted June 06, 2014 03:42 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
I know a place in Finland where you can find Paris and Egypt in a 20km radius. Totally in the middle of nowhere.
I guess Missouri is not so strange after all. Or, at least we have company. <L>
JoonasTo said:
You have to first realise that Finnish is more closely related to fricking Japanese than it is to Swedish. A lot of words are shared because of close proximity but communication with Finnish and Swedish is impossible. It's not related to the indo-european languages like almost every other language in Europe.
If you come to Finland, be sure to give me a call beforehand, I'll see what I can do. ^^
I knew that my friend, I wasn't comparing languages at all. I thought 'in most cases' no matter what language of a name it could & would describe the same land-feature. (if the earliest records could be found) But even simple names like those are tricky when the tongue is not known. Like I said I thought "wold" meant forest but it was only copses of trees across open land.
I think your language is one of the most beautiful that's spoken. How would you say brown-bog and magic-forest?
And, I wish I could take you up on that beer but my travelin' days are behind me. Alas poor Markkur. Did you ever notice my double K.s? Btw, when I wondered what else Markkur might represent, iirc I searched and think I found a horse. Wasn't in English.
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JoonasTo
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posted June 06, 2014 05:19 PM |
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Edited by JoonasTo at 17:19, 06 Jun 2014.
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Yeah but because people had no idea what the others were trying to say they'd just twist it to something that made sense to them or use something else entirely.
Brown-Bog would be "ruskeasuo" and Magic-Forest would be "taikametsä".
Like this.
But generally the older the language the richer it is and thus more beautiful.
You're never too old to travel. 
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artu
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posted June 06, 2014 05:52 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
Yeah but because people had no idea what the others were trying to say they'd just twist it to something that made sense to them or use something else entirely.
Exactly, that's how it works. You know the famous story when Bob Dylan listens to I Wanna Hold Your Hand for the first time and he hears "I cant hide, I cant hide I cant hide" like "I get high I get high I get high"... That's what happens when new people arrive at a place, they twist the names into their own tongue and mindset, so you usually have something sounding very familiar but the meaning is transformed.
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Nitramar
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posted June 06, 2014 11:58 PM |
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JoonasTo said:
But generally the older the language the richer it is and thus more beautiful.
I disagree about age making languages more beautiful. In my opinion beauty in a language comes from semantic clarity and consistency (in the grammar and spelling system), precision of expression (nuances) and extendability without needing to bend the rules. I think these are are properties that often actually deteriorate as the language ages since people often prefer simpler constructs and ignore rules as they speak (practicality beats beauty when you're in a hurry). If you were to define a really neat language now, it might degenerate into something less idealistic over time as people use it and the longer they do, the more "junk" and exceptions they will add to it (btw this applies especially to programming languages as well). In many ways languages are of course getting richer, since we can express more things and in new ways, but in some ways they is getting poorer too, since useful grammatical constructs are disappearing. Written Finnish is a relatively young language (16th century) and has so far avoided a lot of the irregularities and ambiguities that exist in many older languages. I certainly think it's more beautiful than English, dispite being younger (as a written language anyway).
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JoonasTo
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posted June 07, 2014 12:11 AM |
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Written language has nothing to do with it though. Finnish is FAR older than english which is really young as far as languages go. Something like 1500 years old max.
You can see it in how Finnish has way more "features" that are dead in other languages like, English or Hungarian.
Lithuanian is also old as Doctor Who and as such has quite a few features missing from the modern languages too.
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Nitramar
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posted June 07, 2014 12:26 AM |
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I think it's a bit odd to compare ages of spoken languages as they have always just evolved from pre-existing ones anyway. At which point did they become their own language so you could actually tell their age? Written languages are different in the sense that they have been somehow "standardised" as a formal language by the people who contributed to creating the written language. And since written language is usually the "official version" and usually the one taught at school, it clearly affects spoken language to an extent as well.
Finnish has more features than English, sure. But it's also lost a lot of features over the years. For example, I occasionally find myself wanting to use the eventive mood for verbs (tehneisin, menneisin, etc.) but it's hard to use in speech or writing without getting unwanted reactions. And it's losing more and more features because of foreign influence. So in that sense, the passage of time is in some ways hurting the language, which in my opinion makes it questionable whether age is a good indicator of richness.
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JoonasTo
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posted June 07, 2014 12:31 PM |
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Some languages have way clearer edges between new and old though. Like English which is only 5% original vocab, 70% latin and the rest is german.
Yes, the longer along the line of evolution the language is the less features it has. Although they gain some new features along the way they lose much more. But here's the thing, the newer the language, the less features it has and the older the more there are. The way you're thinking about is the same thing but you're just going about it the roundabout way by thinking which has been evolving longer/faster and is newer now. The same result though.
If were using English and Finnish, Finnish has evolved very slowly and is much closer to the proto-languages than English that has been evolving faster and is much farther from the old languages.
"New" and "Old" are not directly related to time in this context. They're related to progress, like if someone were to make a H1 in this day and age it would be old compared to H6 which is new, even if they both released the same day.
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