Originally posted by Vicarious Thrillseeker
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English river names
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Originally posted by Ginger Yellow View PostIt really does. Over time, they sometimes get differentiated (eg Kingston upon Hull vs upon Thames), but there are tons of duplicates. Just have a look through Wikipedia's list of locations and you'll find loads of examples. I mean,there are two Brackenthwaites <i>in Cumbria</i>.
This is also a large part of it, as VA says.
There are two villages named Crosby and until recently they each had pub named the Stag Inn. One distinguishes itself with an -on-Eden suffix, but still gets called Crosby locally.
Little Bampton is a long way from Bampton and neither of them are anything to do with Brampton.
Newby East is a fair step from Newby West (although the latter is at least close to Newby Cross), and all three are a long way from Newby.
I wouldn't want to be a postman round here. Not because of the place names, but because it's always pissing down.
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I remember being told once that nobody south of the Pennines lives more than ten miles from (a) Stoke. I don't think it's true, but it's the kind of thing you can bluster people with in the pub:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoke
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Originally posted by Me Old Flower View PostThere's quite a few River Calders too, with 4 in Northern England and 6 in Scotland. All probably from a common Brythonic Celtic word for hard or violent.
The River Lune which gives its name to Lancaster shares the same root as the welsh word gl?n (meaning pure).
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Presumably, this is a function of very low geographic mobility - if you live in the calder valley, the only river you know nor care about insofar as it affects your livelihood is the one in which you live. Until the railways, and maybe just before with the beginnings of industrial migration, people lived in the same areas they lived in all their lives which were defined by the watersheds in which they lived.
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Shoutout to the River Piddle (alternatively known as the Trent) in Dorset which flows through Piddletrenthide Piddlehinton, Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle and Turnerspuddle.
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I was going to say that you do get duplicates of village names too.
There are Abington's in South Lanarkshire, Northamptonshire, County Limerick, County Tipperary and Cambridgeshire, as well as Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and an Abingdon Abbey that was originally in Bedfordshire.
Edit: plus an Abbington Hotel in Stevenage and an Abbingdon guest house in York.Last edited by Balderdasha; 16-09-2020, 07:03.
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Originally posted by NHH View PostIt's a difference between settlement versus colonisation. The rivers in Europe are river x (nile as part of Europe here), whereas the rivers in non-Europe are the x river.
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I have heard various references to the London River- as in "Sailing Ships of the London River"
Then of course there's Moon River
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Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
I'm trying to go through various famous rivers to see whether this is always true, and I realise I'm tying myself up in knots (mostly because we tend to talk about rivers without saying the word "river" - the Ganges, the Volga, the Mississippi, etc). I think the Volga tends to be Volga River rather than River Volga (but I can no longer tell any more). What about the Tigris and Euphrates, the rivers at the heart of (pre)historical settlement. Is it River Tigris? I think so.
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I can think of Easington, Easington Colliery and Easington Lane in County Durham, Easington in East Cleveland and Easington on Spurn Head, and that's before I start on Seaton Canoe, Seaton Delaval and Seaton Sluice. And Seaham.
Marton is another popular one. And Norton.
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Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
I'm trying to go through various famous rivers to see whether this is always true, and I realise I'm tying myself up in knots (mostly because we tend to talk about rivers without saying the word "river" - the Ganges, the Volga, the Mississippi, etc). I think the Volga tends to be Volga River rather than River Volga (but I can no longer tell any more). What about the Tigris and Euphrates, the rivers at the heart of (pre)historical settlement. Is it River Tigris? I think so.
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Very interesting point about how we say "the River X" for some rivers (British and most European, plus a few others) and "the X River" for the more exotic ones (including most (?) in the developing world).
It prompted me to wonder how many other languages routinely use their equivalent of the word "river" (either before or after the name) when referring to named rivers. German certainly doesn't, and I don't think the other European languages I'm reasonably familiar with do either.
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I can't think of any others that do, whereas the use of local versions of lake or sea is commonLast edited by ursus arctos; 17-09-2020, 16:18.
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