A Place by Any Other Name 19/09/2005 Names are funny things. Sometimes they don't quite fit and we have to invent new ones that somehow describe more aptly. That is how my kids became Mad, Boogie and the Pootle.But it's not just names of people that I think about; place names can be interesting too. I wonder sometimes why all the towns that grew to be great cities always seem to have sensible, natural-sounding names. New York, for instance, would have been acceptable under its original name, New Amsterdam, but what if it had been named New Snoring instead? Would we accept that as happily into our vision of the world? Don't laugh, there really is a Snoring, well two actually (Little Snoring and Great Snoring), in Norfolk, England.How come the places that get named after tiny villages in the old countries never manage to become great and famous cities? We might have had New Upper Piddle (Worcestershire), the great city on San Francisco Bay, or New Clapham, the center of America's car industry. Would we become used to those names and forget how funny they sound?And what if America's great general of the War of Independence hadn't been named Washington but Pratt or Finkelbaum? Presumably the capital of the States would now be Pratt DC or there'd be a state in the northwest corner called Finkelbaum. And what if the British Home Secretary after whom Sydney, Australia, was named had actually been Lord Ponsonby-Smythe? If Lady Jane Grey had succeeded in her bid for the crown and begun a new line of Queen Janes, there might be a state in Australia called Jane, a Jane Falls on the Zambezi River, and we'd look back to the time when Britain was great - the Janian era.It does seem incredibly lucky that all the great cities of the world have turned out to be named fairly sensibly. There is only one example that I can think of where a city has come very close to having a silly name: Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal Province in South Africa, named after two Boer heroes, Piet Retief and Jan Maritz. And even that is fairly imposing, I suppose.Why don't the Dry Gulches and Disappointments ever grow into huge metropolises? Is there some force at work that automatically prevents towns with humorous or strange names ever becoming major urban centers? And how do people know that the little settlement they founded will one day be a massive urban sprawl? Because they do, you know. Take Kansas City, for instance. To have claimed that name, the founders must have foreseen the future.Admittedly, there are a few instances of mistakes being made, Texas City for example. Obviously the founders had big ideas that never quite came to fruition. Perhaps their crystal ball had a crack in it.Generally, however, it seems that the founders got it right. If they had decided to start the city just a few miles to the south, Chicago might now be known as Kankakee. Was it just chance that they picked a place where they could have a rather more respectable name?America is full of possibilities that have somehow never achieved their potential. There might have been great cities named Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; Bucksnort, Tennessee; Paradox, Colorado; Cut and Shoot, Texas; Pflugerville, Texas; Mexican Hat, Utah; West Thumb, Wyoming; Bar Nunn, Wyoming; McNutt, Wyoming. How sad it is that all these have been passed over in favor of the Houstons, the Memphises and Birminghams.It looks statistically impossible, this matter of cities always having stolid, no-nonsense names. Surely, out of all the Bostons, Melbournes, Londons, Philadelphias, Atlantas, there ought to have been at least a few Bottom Bends, Last Chances or Cholomondeleys? But no, some vast, invisible force either prevents us giving future cities silly names, or makes sure that funnily-named towns never grow.There might be a useful principle here, something that founders of new towns could use. If you wanted your town to stay small, you could ensure this by giving it the stupidest name you could think of. But, if you have grand ambitions, think of a name that sounds important and rolls off the tongue. That should guarantee success.Of course, now that we've discovered this hitherto-unexpected force that governs the naming of places, we ought to name it. How does "the Gone Away Conurbation and Settlement Nomenclature Principle" sound?
Clive
Autumn Interesting idea for a post - very nicely done!!! Date Added: 19/09/2005
Gone Away Thanks, Autumn! :) Date Added: 19/09/2005
John (SYNTAGMA) I think sensibilities change with the importance of the place. York, for example, conjures up a small, very old-fashioned, northern English town. Whereas New York summons up Frank Sinatra, Fifth Avenue, Broadway ... etc. The exact opposite. Date Added: 19/09/2005
Gone Away Yes, I agree, John. To some extent, the name of the town becomes welded with familiarity to the town itself. But I'd still like to know why none of the big ones are called Moosejaw or something equally silly... ;) Date Added: 19/09/2005
vanessa What can I say? I live in a boring ol' London too. Complete with its own thames river to boot. Date Added: 19/09/2005
Gone Away The town and the river? Someone was running out of ideas, methinks. ;) Date Added: 19/09/2005
Ken For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of American culture has always been its naming of places, roads, rivers (the Mystic, the Verdigris ...) and its use of them to mythologize the land. We don't do that in Britain - I wonder why - but I've grown up and old imagining the relationship between places I've never seen and their names in novels and films. It's been a wonderful tapestry of ideas. I can't answer your question, but the post brought to mind a lot of thoughts and ideas. To return to a comment about Singapore which I left on a previous post, its name in Malay is Singa Pura, Lion City ... now there's a what if ... Date Added: 19/09/2005
Gone Away I think we named everything there was to name in Britain long ago, Ken. And sometimes the meaning of the words used has changed in the meantime - hence Upper and Lower Piddle. But you're right about the naming of American places. It helps that Americans seem to use their place names in songs a lot too. Fine to write a song about Galveston or San Jose but it just wouldn't sound right to sing about Grimsby or Hartlepool... Date Added: 19/09/2005
Mike Great site. Date Added: 20/09/2005
Gone Away Thank you, Mike. :) Date Added: 20/09/2005
Josh Pigeon Forge is a horrible place, not simply because it conjures in my mind a fiery stygian cave that is the sole source of those dreaded winged-rat crapping machines--no, I was there once, and besides the ridiculous amount of fireworks I purchased to sharpen the days, there was nothing to do but look at rocks and get harrassed by the law for driving a VW bus.
Then again, Memphis is no picnic either. Date Added: 20/09/2005
Gone Away I understand that Pigeon Forge is Dolly Parton's birthplace, Josh. I guess everyone has to come from somewhere... Date Added: 20/09/2005
Josh Moosejaw? What do you think we are? Canadians? ;) Date Added: 20/09/2005
Josh Mental Note: Stop openly insulting southerners soon. ;) Date Added: 20/09/2005
Gone Away Ummm, no but I like the name. I like Kicking Horse Pass too but couldn't fit it into the post. :D Mental note: Britain is on the same latitude as Labrador. Guess that makes me a northerner... Date Added: 20/09/2005
Josh Umm, okay. Are you on the same latitude as Labrador now? ;) Date Added: 20/09/2005
Gone Away Not quite. But are Okies really southerners? Date Added: 20/09/2005
Josh Okay, before this gets any more out of hand, I was referring to Texans as the southerners I should stop insulting, not Okies. wink wink, nudge nudge, saynuhmore saynuhmore :) Date Added: 20/09/2005
Gone Away Ah yes, I see where you're going with this now... ;) Date Added: 20/09/2005
prying1 I'm reminded of Big Bear Lake California. - One side of the lake is busy, bustling growing, traffic jammed town of Big Bear! - While on the otherside is a quiet, little known, slow growth, small town atmosphere place called Fawnskin... Date Added: 20/09/2005
Gone Away Kinda appropriate, huh Paul? :D Date Added: 20/09/2005
Mark Daniels Fun! Date Added: 20/09/2005
Gone Away Glad you enjoyed it, Mark! Date Added: 20/09/2005
hodgepodger very nice post! Date Added: 21/09/2005
Gone Away Thank you, Hodge (may I call you Hodge?)! :) Date Added: 21/09/2005
MAC Could it be a ‘which came first thing?’ Did the large cities become large because they were named well or did they become large cities because the small towns were named poorly? Could it be that sensible people want to live in sensibly named cities and therefore they begin to gravitate from the poorly named towns to the sensibly named towns and as they do these sensibly named towns grow into sensibly named cities? I mean if I lived in wankerville or stankleton I would move, wouldn’t you? Date Added: 21/09/2005
Gone Away Good point, Mark. So much for my "invisible force theory"! :( Date Added: 21/09/2005
Scot Clive: When I was driving through Arizona a few months back, I was paying for gas at a truck stop when a trucker came up and asked the cashier if she could give him directions to "Monkey's Eyebrow." That certainly had to be the most unusual name I ever heard for a town. Can't imagine living there, though. Date Added: 23/09/2005
Gone Away Makes one wonder how a town comes to have such a name, Scot. Sounds like all sorts of coincidences came to gether for that one! Date Added: 23/09/2005
Lee Carlon In his novel 'Stark' Ben Elton talks about Australians tendancy to name things after their most obvious feature, hence Shark Bay, he also claims they had originally planned to call it Water Bay, but I suspect he was joking. Date Added: 24/09/2005
Gone Away I'm sure there must be a Water Bay somewhere, Lee. ;) Date Added: 24/09/2005
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