[HN Gopher] British Placename Mapper
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British Placename Mapper
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-04-08 12:06 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (placenames.rtwilson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (placenames.rtwilson.com)
| jxtr wrote:
| Relevant video from Map Men: https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4
| willyt wrote:
| Just needs a pronunciation guide now. British place names are
| impossible to pronounce even for native British English speakers
| because they are often not said how they are written and only
| people within a 15 mile radius will know the right way.
| switch007 wrote:
| One place even has six silent letters at the beginning!
| willtemperley wrote:
| I don't think people from that particular place, using that
| particular spelling consider themselves British
| switch007 wrote:
| Thanks, I know. Was trying to keep it light. Oh well
| willtemperley wrote:
| You managed to find the only context imaginable in which
| the joke didn't work!
| Shrezzing wrote:
| Cwmystwyth is 10 letters with no vowels.
| eigenket wrote:
| No it's not. W and y are vowels in Welsh (y can also be a
| consonant sometimes but I _think_ only in words loaned from
| English). In Welsh the letter w stands for a sound
| something like the double o in the English word book.
| arethuza wrote:
| I presume you are referring to Derry/Londonderry?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry/Londonderry_name_dispute
| arp242 wrote:
| And the obvious way to solve this would be to rename it to
| Zurichderry, which will make everyone equally unhappy and
| angry, and is therefore the fairest solution.
| switch007 wrote:
| Right, though I didn't realise the website doesn't cover NI
| lenerdenator wrote:
| There's an event horizon that conventional wisdom slips over
| when dealing with many things in the British Isles.
|
| You don't pronounce the first six letters in Londonderry,
| four countries is the same as one country, 26 + 6 somehow
| equals one...
| switch007 wrote:
| But you're OK with 50 states and a district being one
| country?
|
| Also I'm curious if you're familiar with any history of the
| islands of Ireland and Great Britain? If not, I recommend
| reading up - save you accusing any country of just being
| unwise, or whatever it is you are attempting to convey with
| "an event horizon that conventional wisdom slips over"
| ben_w wrote:
| "Four countries is one country" is very different from
| "50 states is one country".
|
| For one, Northern Ireland is variously described as a
| country, province or region despite (sometimes) having
| its own government and semi-independent legal system.
|
| Wales has its own language and parliament, but shares a
| legal system (but not all laws) with England.
|
| Scotland has its own legal system and is supposed to be
| the equal counter-party to {England {which included
| Wales}} in the name "United Kingdom of ...".
|
| England doesn't have an independent parliament of its
| own, "just" (scare-quotes needed) the one for the whole
| UK.
|
| The history may have led to the status quo, but it's fair
| and reasonable to say the status quo is bonkers.
| switch007 wrote:
| This discussion reminds of when a junior joins a team on
| an old monolith and after 3 days claims everything a
| mess! It's bonkers! How can you work like this! I could
| rewrite this perfectly in 3 months! Is it "bonkers" if
| it's generating $1bn in revenue?
|
| UK GDP is $3tn :D
|
| > "Four countries is one country" is very different from
| "50 states is one country".
|
| I don't think you made a very compelling argument. Both
| are made of constituent parts. Both are "united" in
| various ways. States have their own constitutions, laws
| etc. It's messy. Fewer issues around language, I grant
| that.
| ben_w wrote:
| > UK GDP is $3tn :D
|
| Most of which is England
|
| > I don't think you made a very compelling argument
|
| Fair enough.
|
| "Four countries is one country" has the same level of
| abstraction; "50 states is one country" (or in reverse,
| the EU can be seen as "27 countries one state" if you
| squint and are a bit vague with definitions) is different
| kinds of abstraction.
|
| Pizza is a possible pizza topping, but it's also weird.
| brnt wrote:
| I like the French now tradition of a full reboot every
| now and then. Cruft is qaint, but century after century
| or so parts become a burden. Forcing yourself to decide
| what to keep and what to toss is good.
| happymellon wrote:
| The US has the same issue, just maybe not to the same extent.
|
| Is it pronounced in English, Spanish, one of the Native
| American tongues?
|
| Unless you are from the US and get taught these things it's
| easy to get place names wrong.
| eigenket wrote:
| US pronunciation is (from the point of view of a western
| european) very very wild sometimes. If you ask anyone who
| lives closer to Paris than America how to pronounce the
| university of Notre Dame you're going to get a very different
| answer to someone who's an alumnus (something like Nodur
| Dayme?).
| julian_t wrote:
| Yep... Calais (ME) and Bryn Mawr (PA) come to mind.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| New Orleans.
|
| Nor-luns (locals)
|
| Nyoo Or-lee-uns (british)
|
| Noo Or-leh-onz (confused french people)
|
| Its confusing.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| French people say La Nouvelle Orleans as it is supposed
| to be ;)
| sorokod wrote:
| What would a native French speaker make of DuPage county?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPage_County,_Illinois
| eigenket wrote:
| The name of the whole of Illinois is an American-English
| mispronunciation of a French mispronunciation of a Native
| American word which is/was something like irenwe*wa.
| dctoedt wrote:
| I think they'd also say _laissez rouler les bon temps_
| (let roll the good times) as proper French grammar.
| macintux wrote:
| Versaylz, Indiana.
| willtemperley wrote:
| Even locals can't decide on pronunciation - Shrewsbury is
| pronounced as it is written unless you're posh, when it becomes
| Shrowsbury.
|
| https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2015/06/27/shrowsbury-or...
| Shrezzing wrote:
| Bicester is another canonical example. Pronounced like
| "Mister" with a "B" in place of the "M". I don't think a
| single native English speaker would correctly pronounce
| Bicester on their first attempt.
| tompko wrote:
| The elision of the 'e' in -cester placenames so that the
| 'c' and 's' have a single sound is reasonably common e.g.
| Leicester, Gloucester, Worcester, Towcester, Bicester. So
| English natives should have a reasonable chance of getting
| the pronunciation of a previously unseen example correct.
| pirates wrote:
| I have heard even Manchester sometimes spoken that way as
| well, depending on who you're talking to.
| JdeBP wrote:
| It's not even unreasonable. -caster, -chester, and
| -cester are related suffixes.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| All descending from the Latin "castrum", which means
| "fort". So if a placename has one of those suffixes,
| chances are high that it was a Roman settlement.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Godmanchester in Cambridgeshire, although now pronunced
| by most people as 'God-Man-Chest-Er', used to be
| pronounced (and may still be by some locals) as Gumster.
| darrenf wrote:
| And then along comes Cirencester.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Sissiter according to the locals in the old days, Siren
| when I was growing up in nearby Swindon.
| rob74 wrote:
| And that's why "Worcester Sauce" is the second most
| mispronounced culinary term in Germany (after
| "Stracciatella") *
|
| [*] - according to my made-up-on-the spot stats
| tonymillion wrote:
| Also doesn't help that it's actual name is
| "Worcestershire sauce" which is even more difficult to
| say.
| brnt wrote:
| Now I must know: how do Germans pronounce stracciatella?
| hoseja wrote:
| Similar to Worcester.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| If you take the M40 to Bicester, you pass by High Wycombe.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| If you're on a Transport for Wales train you'll hear it said
| as _Amwythig_ as well. There 's a surprising amount of Welsh
| names for English cities:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_exonyms#United_Kingdom_(.
| ..
| jaclaz wrote:
| Anyone remembers the character of Raymond Luxury-Yacht
| (pronounced "Throatwobbler Mangrove") ?
|
| https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Raymond_Luxury-Yacht
| arethuza wrote:
| There can also be cases where nobody in the area actually uses
| anything close to the "official" name - e.g. Fraserburgh being
| known as "The Broch" or Aberchirder as "Foggie", Gardenstown as
| "Gamrie"...
|
| NB Been a while since I lived in an adjacent area, things may
| have changed...
| ochrist wrote:
| The Netherlands have several of these, the most famous one
| probably being The Hague:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hague#Etymology
|
| Officially (in some official documents) the name of the city
| is "'s-Gravenhage", but normally it's just called "Den Haag".
|
| Another similar one from The Netherlands is this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'s-Hertogenbosch
| dspillett wrote:
| A complaint typically mad by Americans. Amusingly the person
| who recently took issue with the matter in my (physical)
| presence came from a place in _Arkansas_ which from then on I
| 've deliberately pronounced ahh-can-sas.
|
| The issue is more common in countries old enough to have not
| made up most of their place names (or unimaginatively stolen
| them from elsewhere, looking at you New York, Boston, Paris,
| etc.!) in recent centuries, so there has been a lot more
| evolution (or in some cases outright replacement due to
| invasions & politics) in language pronunciation and/or spelling
| since those names were first coined, but the young whipper-
| snappers like the US are far from immune to the problem.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Just needs a pronunciation guide now._
|
| A far from trivial task, given we can't agree on (for "can't
| agree on", read "actually have arguments about") the
| pronunciation of simple baked products.
|
| It is _neither_ scone nor scone you fools. Both are wrong, and
| it should in fact be pronounced "scone".
| ben_w wrote:
| And then there are the jam/cream wars...
| lambdas wrote:
| I would also like the people of Frome to stop being churlish
| and admit that's not how you pronounce that combination of
| letters
| flir wrote:
| frrrrrruuuume!
|
| (rhymes with scone).
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > (rhymes with scone).
|
| For those who didn't hear the whoosh, is that the 'scoan'
| or 'scon' pronunciation?
| flir wrote:
| Bonus third choice: Stone of Scone.
|
| Pronounced like Frome ;)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > Just needs a pronunciation guide now
|
| The Map Men on YouTube did a short (8min) video on why
| pronunciation is hard and a guide:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4
| psunavy03 wrote:
| TIL Britain is like Washington State. Try getting anyone from
| east of the Cascades to pronounce Sequim, Snoqualmie,
| Snohomish, Puyallup, or Cle Elum correctly.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think there are even places with the same spelling but
| different pronunciations, as they're a long distance from each
| other.
| iam-TJ wrote:
| I get a giggle every time I hear an American talk about "Fort
| Belvoir" because in the English Vale of Belvoir, under Belvoir
| Castle, it is pronounced "Beaver" not "Bel-Voir"
| flir wrote:
| Shame it doesn't do regexes so you can control for position in
| word.
|
| But a search for thorpe (Scunthorpe, Mablethorpe, Cleethorpes,
| farmstead) vs a search for ney (Athelney, Muchelney, Thorney,
| island) will give you a feel for the influence of Anglo-Saxon vs
| Old Norse.
| pxndxx wrote:
| What? It does do regex, and start/end of word, by default. It's
| the "Anywhere" dropdown.
| flir wrote:
| Ooh, thanks!
| madcaptenor wrote:
| It also lets you create a link to a search - here's the one you
| mentioned.
| https://placenames.rtwilson.com/#W3sidGV4dCI6InRob3JwZSIsImN...
| scaglio wrote:
| Interesting! Surely there are lots of moors...
| throwaway598 wrote:
| Moorhamshirecockbottom, being one.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Looking for places that have a "-ham" AND a "-wich" in there, I
| lazily used the regex `.*ham.*wich`, which yielded a single
| result in all of the UK:
|
| "Hammerwich" (near Wolverhampton)
| arrowsmith wrote:
| You made me think of the neighbouring settlements of "Ham" and
| "Sandwich", as seen on this sign:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/doverpast/3672723972
| tetris11 wrote:
| Because of course.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Of course my first search was 'cock'
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I found Fartown and Fartown Green, Trofarth, Stoke Farthing,
| Winfarthing, Farther Howegreen, Farthing Street, Stoke
| Farthing, and Farthingloe!
| dmurray wrote:
| But only one Scunthorpe.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Then there's Haseley Knob and Knob's Crook.
|
| So much for "No one from the UK will buy a keyboard named
| KNOB".
|
| https://twitter.com/benfryc/status/1776974002616951210
| pards wrote:
| Utah's "Gobblers Knob" [0] takes the cake on this one
|
| [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/PzYTNtwaPBzQk84S6
| kitd wrote:
| A short 30-minute drive from my house can take me to Cocking,
| via S.Harting and Didling.
| mattkevan wrote:
| My parents live in a village next to Fingeringhoe, which never
| fails to amuse my inner 8 year old, no matter how many times
| I've been there.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Also "Penistone".
|
| (It's pronounced "PEN-iss-tun")
| lordelph wrote:
| Very interesting tool! My Yorkshire grandfather would often say
| "kirk" instead of "church", which I always thought was more of a
| Scottish word. Doing a place name comparison of those words shows
| a fairly clear division of north and south -
| https://placenames.rtwilson.com/#W3sidGV4dCI6ImtpcmsiLCJjb2x...
| arethuza wrote:
| Interestingly enough when I was growing up in a small Scottish
| village (~1000 people) it was the Church of Scotland that was
| referred to as the "kirk" - the other 5 or so "churches"
| weren't referred to as kirks.
| 9dev wrote:
| ...which ties neatly in the German word for church, which is
| _Kirche_ (the "ch" is phonetically similar to "k"). How did I
| never notice that?
| 0xdada wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if that's also via Scandinavian
| influence (kyrke). Some other examples are bra, barn, hus.
| GordonS wrote:
| Another one is kist, which apparently means "chest" in
| Norwegian too.
| bonki wrote:
| In which universe are German k and ch phonetically similar?
| eigenket wrote:
| In the UK the word comes from Norse, via the Viking Invasion
| not directly from anything Germanic (other than that Germanic
| and Norse share some stuff).
| vidarh wrote:
| Norse is/was _a_ Germanic language, just like Norwegian,
| German, Dutch, German _and_ English.
|
| English, though has Germanic influence in multiple rounds -
| both through the influx of Angles and Saxons, and through
| the later viking invasions.
| vesinisa wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place...
|
| According to this "kirk" is Old Norse (i.e. Viking) in origin.
| It's the same Germanic root as modern English church.
| vidarh wrote:
| Kirke in modern Norwegian.
|
| Scottish include quite a few other Norse forms. E.g. "bairn"
| (child), vs "barn" in Norwegian.
| beAbU wrote:
| Glad to know that all the "* on sea" places are actually coastal.
| hengistbury wrote:
| Though interestingly there is a "Portsmouth" in West Yorkshire
| which is neither a port, nor at the mouth of any river or
| estuary.
| philk10 wrote:
| I'm from Southport, NW England - not in the South and not
| even a port
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The combination of the giant hand cursor with the hot spot
| underneath in the middle so you can't see what the palm is
| "pointing" to, plus the teenie tiny little dot targets, plus the
| small pop-up tooltip text that the cursor partially covers up,
| sure makes it hard and frustrating to use! Zooming in doesn't
| help, the tiny dots stay small.
|
| Why aren't more user interface designers aware of Fitts' Law, and
| why do some seem to violate it on purpose?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
| secondcoming wrote:
| I'm surprised that there are only 3 places in Scotland that begin
| with 'Bally'.
|
| No 'Baile' outside of the remotest areas either.
| vesinisa wrote:
| -by (Norse suffix for 'settlement') vs. -bury (corruption of Old
| English for 'castle') lets you pretty nicely draw out the borders
| of the historic Danelaw i.e. the area where the Norse Vikings
| settled:
|
| https://placenames.rtwilson.com/#W3sidGV4dCI6ImJ5IiwiY29sb3I...
|
| Compare against this map:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:England_878.svg
|
| The Danelaw ceased to politically exist over a thousand years ago
| so that's pretty impressive.
| JdeBP wrote:
| As I said in another comment, just bear in mind the possibility
| that the map of 878 England from the 19th century could well be
| based upon the same evidence. Although it is significant that
| the names survive and show clear boundaries, it may well be a
| lot less significant that a modern map and a 19th century map
| show the same boundaries.
| mdpye wrote:
| -thorpe, from either old nose or Anglo saxon also shows another
| nice geographical line. Complements the defaults selected on
| the page nicely:
|
| https://placenames.rtwilson.com/#W3sidGV4dCI6ImJ1cmdoIiwiY29...
| arethuza wrote:
| Quite a lot of what is now Scotland was Norse for a long time -
| the most obvious name being "Sutherland" (Sudrland) which is
| extreme north west of the island of Britain:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Scotland
| pjc50 wrote:
| The Norse vs. Old English vs. Roman place naming also explains
| the inconsistent pronunciation (see other subthread)
| fransje26 wrote:
| So very interesting. Thank you!
| ubutler wrote:
| This reminds me of an episode of Map Men where they offhandedly
| point out that by plotting British place names of Viking origins,
| it is possible to see the true extent of their invasion:
| https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4?si=l-b6-p4fSeviWmMs&t=310. In fact,
| the map they show in that episode
| (https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/n2s2qu/map_of_brit...)
| looks strikingly similar to this map I've found on Wikipedia of
| Celtic, Danish and English territory in 878:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:England_878.svg
| kitd wrote:
| You can do the same with early Saxons and the '-ing' suffix. It
| is concentrated towards the south east. Variants such as
| '-ington' and '-ingham' came later incorporating wider
| influences.
| JdeBP wrote:
| It's worth remembering that the 19th century map of 878 could
| well have been constructed the same way from the same evidence.
| walthamstow wrote:
| My favourite thing about that map is how much of modern eastern
| England is still under the North Sea
| n4r9 wrote:
| Fewer "cum"s than I expected:
| https://placenames.rtwilson.com/#W3sidGV4dCI6IiBjdW0gIiwiY29...
|
| It's missing a couple of my favourites such as Bassingbourn cum
| Kneesworth
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassingbourn_cum_Kneesworth) and
| Shingay cum Wendy
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingay_cum_Wendy). Perhaps they
| are too small to count.
|
| EDIT: Shingay and Wendy are listed as separate villages. Silly
| me!
| simonw wrote:
| Thanks to this I found the source data which is really cool:
| https://osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/OpenNames - you can
| download a zip file full of CSVs with a huge number of geographic
| names (with British National Grid (EPSG:27700) coordinates).
| amsterdorn wrote:
| -mouth is another good one, lots of river openings!
| ollybee wrote:
| bank is interesting, broadly north west, when you might expect
| south east.
| vincebowdren wrote:
| It's from an Old English toponym, and those are sometimes quite
| variable across the country; for example locally in Sheffield
| any steep hillsides are named 'cliffe' e.g. Attercliffe,
| Brincliffe.
| operator-name wrote:
| It's interesting to see that the cardinal directions are
| everywhere since they're used locally:
|
| https://placenames.rtwilson.com/#W3sidGV4dCI6Ik5vcnRoIiwiY29...
| xandrius wrote:
| Doesn't seem to work worldwide just UK.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Perhaps that's why it's called the "British Place Name mapper"
| xandrius wrote:
| Still not strictly meaning that it cannot find a British
| place name elsewhere.
|
| The very first test would be "York" or "London" for many
| folks.
| fransje26 wrote:
| Oh, this is such a cool tool. Amazing! Thanks!
| jl6 wrote:
| (Godmanchester, Manchester, Chester) is a Matryoshka Settlement
| of length 3. Is there one of length 4?
| Eavolution wrote:
| Annoyingly I don't think this is working with NI, I tried starts
| with Bally (which there's a lot of in NI, ballymena, ballymacash,
| ballycastle etc) and I only got a couple in Scottland
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(page generated 2024-04-10 23:01 UTC)