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Unusually heavy winter rains have flooded the town of Chertsey, west of London, twice in the past three years. Only its old center—a raised plot on the bank of the River Thames where Anglo-Saxon monks built an abbey in the seventh century—has remained consistently dry. For most residents, the rising waters, often stinking with sewage, have come as an unwelcome surprise after centuries of a relatively dry, stable climate. They seem to have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, this telling fact about the place they call home: In Old English, Chertsey means "Ceorot's island."
The name harkens back to the Early Medieval Period, when Germanic tribes began to settle, and name, many of the places dotting maps of modern Britain. Back then, water was ubiquitous. Sediment deposits dating to this era paint a picture of overtopped riverbanks and runoff rushing down slopes. "Anglo-Saxon England was a water world," says Richard Jones, a landscape historian at the University of Leicester. He studies how early English settlers used place names, or toponyms, to encode practical information about their watery environment. For instance, Byfleet, a village in southern England, indicates a "tidal creek," or "estuary"; Buildwas, in the west, describes "land subject to rapid flooding and draining"; and Averham, in the east, a "settlement at the floods."
What does it mean for North Piddle, Shitterton, Crapstone, and Scratchy Bottom?
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday November 25 2015, @05:26PM
“The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.
The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.”
Terry Pratchett - The light fantastic
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @06:16PM
Probably how the Avon River got its name. Afon is Cymraeg (Welsh) for river. It's pretty easy to imagine a proto-Englishman asked a Britan what it was called and getting the common noun instead of the proper noun.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 25 2015, @08:36PM
If I recall correctly there's a hill in Britain called hillhillhillhillhill hill, but with only the final hill in english. I forget what the others were, so I'll guess Pict, Welsh, Saxon, and Norse...but one of them could have been Cornish for all I really know.
IOW, it's a pretty common way for people to name things, sort of like we have ATM machines.
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