BS: True place names

Subject: BS: True place names
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 06:36 AM

True names

Though it is an advertorial it is an interesting look at the meanings of the names in various localities and those names used instead of the place names we use today.

Always been interested in maps and place names so I might just go out and buy the atlas.

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Leadfingers
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 07:10 AM

Looks like a 'fun' Atlas to have Frank !

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Charley Noble
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 08:08 AM

Lots of fun to survey the names of this map. Maybe I'll pick up a copy as a supplemental guide to my trek across the UK this September.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Penny S.
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 10:47 AM

It's not as clear as it might be. For instance, Goldford (now Guildford) is the ford where marsh marigolds grew. And while Essex and Sussex may well end with the element seax, meaning something like a bowie knife (general purpose, now that's a knife type thing, not exactly a sword, on display in museums) they do it because they were Saxons, people of the knife, living in the east and the south, and where the stones came in I know not. (Not when I did my place names evening class, they weren't there.)

Dover is not Watertown as there is no town element in the name. It was, in Celtic and English, the place "At the Waters". It is interesting because the case ending of Dubris was carried over to the case ending of Dofras, which argues for the name's meaning being known to the English settlers - and you don't bother about grammar when you invade destructively.

I know I'm being pedantic here.... it's a great idea.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 12:47 PM

I believe there's a hill somewhere in the Scottish Borders whose name means "hill hill hill hill hill" due to the movement of the various peoples over the millenia.

The longest one I know definitely is "Glendale Valley" (Gaelic, Norse and English).

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 12:51 PM

Is Chicago labeled as "Stinking River"? I've heard on various occasions that that's the literal translation.

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Bert
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 02:17 PM

The ending "den" meant "hog wallow" found in towns in Kent like Marden and in the song "Farmer in his den"

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: greg stephens
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 02:21 PM

Dave MacKenzie's Hillhillhillhill place is Torpenhow in Cumberland. I'm not sure that there actually is a hill called Torpenhow Hill, but it would nice if there was!

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 03:21 PM

Don't know if it is on a map but I have seen a sign near it that said "Torpenhow Hill"

to clarify what was said above.

tor = hill
pen = hill
how = hill

Seax (also Hadseax, Sax, Seaxe, Scramaseax,Scramsax and Sachsum-lat.-[1] ) in Old English means knife or cutting tool.[2] In modern archeology (and further in this article), the term seax is used specifically for the typically large knives that were worn by men in the 5th to 11th century, in the region roughly enclosed by Ireland, Scandinavia and Northern Italy. In heraldry, the seax is a charge consisting of a curved sword with a notched blade.

A triple red seax (curved sword with notch) on a white field is the emblem for Essex.

The name Essex originates in the Anglo-Saxon period of the Early Middle Ages and has its root in the Old English Ēastseaxe (i.e. the "East Saxons"), the eastern kingdom of the Saxons. How the term for the cutting tool got mixed up with the term for Saxons is anyone's guess. I suppose it is because the term seax was also used for the men carrying seax blades.

I love maps and this Atlas looks like great fun. Thinking it might make a very good present for a couple of family members. Maybe even for me.

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: gnu
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 03:38 PM

Cool stuff from all.

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 07:09 PM

That's only got four hills. The one I was thinking of had a "cnoc" in there somewhere - There had been Gaelic speakers.

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 07:19 PM

There are so many river Rivers across Great Britain - River Avon, River Rother, River Trent, River Thames, River Piddle....

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 03:27 AM

River Avon, another tautology!

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: theleveller
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 06:17 AM

Hey, I come from the Great Land of the Tattooed - might have to go and get a few more.

Subject: RE: BS: True place names
From: Penny S.
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 05:08 PM

I think, but have not been able to check, that the seax was typically sharp on one edge only, not both, like a sword. And somewhere in my mind an insistent voice is muttering something about an early Saxon leader called Seaxnot. Or possibly a god. I think they had a different founding god from other Germanic groups. Not Woden/Wotan/Odin.

My books are all either in boxes, or in double rows on bookshelves waiting to be ordered again, and I can't find a thing.

Penny