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: 4, Insightful) by isostatic on Wednesday November 25 2015, @03:22PM
WARNING WARNING
Daily mail link detected
Please remove frontal lobe before continuing
(Score: 5, Informative) by Jaruzel on Wednesday November 25 2015, @03:34PM
Daily Fail link notwithstanding, I live down the road from Pratts Bottom. In fact, en-route to it via a major road, one will see a sign that says:
30 years of seeing it, and it still makes me smile :)
-Jar
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday November 25 2015, @04:05PM
Is your name Roger Storer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @05:05PM
(Score: 4, Funny) by Hartree on Wednesday November 25 2015, @05:14PM
"30 years of seeing it, and it still makes me smile :)"
But does it make Pratt smile? (And do we really want to know?)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 25 2015, @04:24PM
What's wrong with Daily Mail? I'm only familiar with two UK papers, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
The story itself seemed innocuous enough...
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @05:06PM
Where to begin?!
It is a xenophobic, scandal-sheet that pretends it is a 'quality paper' for the masses. Its editorial policy during the 1930s was one of support for Hitler and Oswald Mosely's UK version, the British Union of Fascists (have a quick google) and it often feels not too far removed from that even now. One of its nicknames is the "Hate Mail" and another, after Orwell's 1984, it the "Daily Hate".
Its science and medicine coverage is particularly bad, with a headline every other week it seems telling us that something or other causes cancer or that those irritating scientists have decided that some now doesn't cause cancer. This is all based on the minimum foundation of scientific knowledge and the maximum amount of scaremongering and sensationalism. There is an excellent Daily Mail headline generator on the web that will give you a feel for the types of things it puts on its front page.
It has the most despised newspaper editor in the country running it (Paul Dacre) and he gets away with presenting outright lies and inflammatory headlines because, in a true stroke of genius, he is also the chair of the group that decides the acceptable code of conduct for UK papers, the Press Complaints Committee's (PCC) Editors' Code of Practice Committee.
It has a strange, hypocritical prurient attitude towards women, with regular stories along the lines of "X wears disgustingly skimpy bikini on the beach - 15 debauched photos inside"
So as you can guess, it revels in its claim to be the most widely read newspaper in the country and that it is therefore the 'right-thinking person's' paper of choice, when it is basically a red-top tabloid for middle class pensioners and anyone who needs a respectable seeming reason for their prejudices.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 25 2015, @07:22PM
What, no link to the debauched photos? THAT might be interesting . . .
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 25 2015, @03:32PM
That's all well and good for Brits - if they research a little bit, the name of their home towns tells them quite clearly that they can expect floods, and maybe other things. How about us, here in the Americas?
Well, we have the Native Americans with a long history in this land, who might give us some insights. How about Chapanoke, North Carolina? The name means "Land of the Dead". Did the natives have a zombie apocolypse before the white man showed up? Might it happen a again there?
Niagara, of course, means "Thundering water". That might be helpful knowledge for a bunch of foreigners rafting down the river.
Rappahannock is "Swift rising river" - which might indicate flash flooding. A wise man might not want to build his home here, maybe?
Saginaw, "pouring out at mouth" is probably referring to the water - then again, people living here might have diarrhea of the mouth?
Tuscaloosa, "black warrior" - hmmmm, did Africans come to the Americas before Europeans?
I read a story once, maybe it was one of those Louis Lamour westerns. Maybe it was pure fiction, but Lamour researched his narratives pretty extensively. The local tribes had a name for a place in the mountains, "Dancing stones" or some such. They would travel through, they would hunt and fish, but they wouldn't stay in the valley, or on the hillsides even overnight. Along came the white men, and built a nice little town in the valley, only to have it destroyed by an avalanche after a few years.
I think we need to research the Native American languages to see what might be in store for us, on this side of the pond.
(Score: 2) by Jaruzel on Wednesday November 25 2015, @03:37PM
Tuscaloosa, "black warrior" - hmmmm, did Africans come to the Americas before Europeans?
Technically... yes they did. From Africa into Europe, across north Asia, over the baring straight, and down the continent, ending up in south America.
-Jar
This is my opinion, there are many others, but this one is mine.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @03:40PM
One day an Indian boy asked his father why they have such long names? The dad answers, "Well son whenever a Indian baby is born the father would go outside and name the baby after the first thing he sees... Why do you ask Two Dogs Fucking?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @05:47PM
Oh, I learnt that joke completely different in my primary school many decades ago... here goes...
There's a tribe of Indians (Native Americans) that names their children like pp mentioned. When the three boys are 12 years old, they go for a talk with the medicine man who explains this sacred history to them.
The first boy goes into the medicine man's tent, and asks "Dear shaman, why am I called "Blue Eagle"?
The medicine man responds, "That's because when you were born, a blue eagle flew across our camp."
The second boy goes into the medicine man's tent, and asks "So tell me medicine man, why am I called "Red Snake"? I've never seen one?
The medicine man responds, "a few moons before you were born, a very rare red snake was seen just outside our camp."
The third, timid boy, stutters to the medicine man: "Um.. medicine man, can you tell me why I am called Ripped Condom?"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 25 2015, @04:30PM
Eastern City Slicker: "We just drove through Ninny Pippy National Wildlife Refuge. That's a beautiful area!"
Gas Station Attendant: "What?"
City Slicker: "Ni-nny Pi-ppy. The bird sanctuary outside town."
Gas Station Attendant: "Oh. You mean, 'Ninepipe.'"
Some Indian names, aren't. :-)
Washington DC delenda est.
(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.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hartree on Wednesday November 25 2015, @05:10PM
Well, I live in the town of Homer. Obviously the 1700s era settlers who named it were referring to the large supply of donuts here and the proximity of nuclear power plants they could work at.
(Actually, it's not named for the Greek author. A "homer" was 1700s slang for a good place for a home.)