UK County Nicknames

After last time looking at the nicknames of the US states, as promised I redress the balance by looking at some of the welcome signs of the counties on the other side of the Atlantic. In alphabetical order and not a complete list starting with England.

Cheshire is Home of England's Finest Gardens

Durham is Land of the Prince Bishops.

Herefordshire, where apparently you can.

Kent is the Garden of England.

Lancashire is a place where everyone matters.

Leicestershire is the Heart of Rural England.

Northamptonshire where you can apparently let yourself grow.

Northumberland is England's Border Country

Nottinghamshire is Robin Hood County.

Stafforshire is the Creative County.

Warwickshire is Shakespeare's County.

And in Scotland

Aberdeenshire is, apparently, from mountain to sea the very best of Scotland.

Clackmannshire is more than you imagine, or say it seems.

Kinrossshire was Scotland's first fairtrade county.

Moray is malt whisky country.

And in Wales

Denbighshire makes one wonder whether if it is rife with disease as it proclaims "you'll never leave".

And in Northern Ireland

Antrim is proud to be Northern Ireland's first fairtrade borough.

Fermanagh welcomes you naturally.

Welsh place names in the USA

In an unashamedly blatant plug for my book English Place Names Transferred to the USA, I thought it might be nice to look at some of the Welsh examples. This is unknown territory for me as I neither speak nor read Welsh, so I'm grateful for the help from those who do.

Bala - is a place name from bala and 'a place where a river enters a lake'.

Berwyn - another which has not changed at all since berwyn means 'snowy summit'.

Bangor - a delightful name for it describes what could be found in the early days as it describes this as the place of 'the wattled fence'.

Bryn Mawr - is Welsh for 'the big hill'.

Caernarvon - as many will know this is Welsh for 'the fort near Mon', this the Welsh name for Angelesey.

Cardiff - is the 'fort on the (river) Taff'. Origins of the river name are disputed but may mean 'craggy' or 'rocks' and describe the nature of the youthful river.

Flint - is named for the 'gravel' of the stony area on which the castle was built.

Lampeter - an Anglicised version of Llanbedr or 'church of St Peter'.

Gwynedd - is the 'land of the Venedotae', this the name of the Celtic tribe.

Montgomery - took the name of Roger de Montgomery, himself named after the town of Montgomery in the Pays d'Auge region of Normandy. THe Welsh name os Trefaldwyn means 'the town of Baldwin'.

Pembrey - simple Welsh for 'the top of the hill'.

Pembroke - is the Anglicised version of Penfro or 'amd's end'.

Radnor - is the English version and means 'red bank', while the original Welsh name of Maesyfed means 'Hyfaidd's field'.

Swansea - this is not English but an Old Scandinavian name meaning 'Sveyn's island', the Welsh version is Abertawe mouth of 'the river Tawe'

Australian Territories

To define the names of the eight territories of Australia seems a little pointless, for they are obvious. Of course, this is because they were named very recently, albeit from words often coined very much earlier. Yet these are worthwhile looking at for, unlike most names which simply developed, these were chosen.

Western Australia - obviously the westernmost part of Australia, but why 'west'? It transpires this an abbreviation of the Proto-Indo-European compound wes-pero meaning 'evening'. Australia is an abbreviation of the Latin Terra Australis meaning simply 'southern land'.

Southern Australia - from the Proto-Germanic sunthaz or quite literally 'sun side'. For the origins of Australia see Western Australia above.

Northern Territory - 'north' comes from Proto-Indo-European ner meaning 'left' as that is where north lies when facing the rising sun. Note the same word is the root of Sanskrit narakah 'hell'. Territory is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ters 'to dry' and orium a suffix denoting place. Together this produced the Latin territorium meaning 'a place from which people are warned off'.

Australian Capital Territory - Named as such for it is home to Canberra, itself a greatly Anglicised version of an indigenous name. Tales of this being named Canberry because of the number of native Australian Cranberry bushes growing around here seems fanciful, at best. Possibly this represents an old Ngunnawal word meaning 'meeting place', although other sources point to the two mountains which dominate the skyline and thus the river running between them is the nganbira or 'hollow between a woman's breasts'. For the origins of Territory see Northern Territory above and for the origins of Australia see Western Australia, also above.

New South Wales - a word seen since Proto-Indo-European newo and thus has hardly changed in form or meaning for thousands of years. For the origins of south see South Australia above, while Wales is an Old English word, where wahl meant 'foreigner' or, more correctly, 'not Saxon'.

Queensland - named in 1859 after former monarch Queen Victoria.

Victoria - exactly as for Queensland above.

Tasmania - is named after the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the first European to sight the island, doing so on November 24th 1642, although he called it Van Diemen's Land after the then Dutch governor-general of the East Indies. Abel's surname comes from a Germanic term meaning 'of great faith'.

What do we know of the names of regional names used by those living here for millennia prior to the arrival of the Europeans? Nothing, as while they had names for places they did not name vast areas as they simply did not need to.

Geological Ages

A new year and, unlike the Chinese calendar, it doesn't have a name but a number. Remember the good old days before humanity took over the planet when great beasts roamed the land or earlier still when no life-form on the planet existed unless it was single celled? No? In those days at least they had the good sense to give the eons names instead of numbers.

Precambrian is, well, as the name suggests tha which came before the Cambrian. Not overly imaginative you would think but it does cover four billion years from the start of the planet up to 541 million years ago. Credit should also be given to correctly forecasting the name given to the following eon, the Cambrian.

Cambrian was coined by Adam Sedgwick, who named the period of 541 to 485 million years ago after the Latinised form of Cymru, the Welsh name for Wales as this is where he felt the rocks from this time were best exposed. The Welsh Cymry, the word for the people of Cymru, means 'fellow countrymen', rather different from the Saxon wahl from which comes the name of Wales which meant 'foreigner', although this could hardly be considered xenophobic as all the Saxons were saying was they were not Saxon.

Ordovician is named after the Celtic Ordovices, as chosen by Charles Lapworth in 1879, to describe the period from 485 to 443 million years ago. The Ordovices may have farmed the land and kept sheep but they were named for their word for 'hammer'.

Silurian period covers the period 443 to 419 million years ago and named by Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, a friend of Adam Sedgwick, who named it after another Celtic tribe, the Silures. This Welsh tribe's name has most often been described as 'unknown', although this has not stopped a great number of suggestions. One suggests the personal name Essyllt giving the region the name Essyllwg and the people the Essyllwr. Essyllt was a daughter of the king of Germany and one of three damsels of celestial beauty, who married Locrinus and their daughter, Hafren, gave a name to the river Severn in which she drowned along with her mother.

Devonian period of 419 to 358 million years ago takes its name from Devon, again because this was where rocks from the period were first studied. The county is also named from a tribe iof Britons, the Dumnonii, who took their name from the Celtic dubnos and speaks of them as 'dwellers of the deep valley'.

Carboniferous, the period from 358 to 298 million years ago, is named because these rocks are said to be 'coal-bearing', coming from the Latin carbo 'coal' and fero 'I carry'.

Permian, 298 to 252 million years ago, was named in 1841 by Sir Roderick Murchison as these rocks were associated with the region of Perm Krai in Russia. Perm comes either from Finnish or Vepsian Peramaa or Hungarian perem meaning 'far away land' or 'edge' respectively.

Triassic period lasted from 252 to 201 million years ago. Named in 1834 by Friedrich von Alberti after three rock layers known as trias.

Jurassic lasted from 201 to 145 million years ago and is named from the Jura mountains, again where these rocks were first studied. The name Jura is from juria, a Celtic term for 'forest'.

Cretaceous, 145 to 65 million years ago, is a period named by Belgian geologist Jean d'Halloy in 1822 for the chalk beds found around the Paris Basin. The Latin creta means 'chalk'.

Eocene, from 65 to 33 million years ago, is named from the Ancient Greek eos 'dawn' and refers to the new fauna which appeared after the mass extinction of 65 million years ago.

Oligocene, 33 to 23 million years ago, is another from Ancient Greek, this time where oligos 'few' and kainos 'new' refers to the scarcity of molluscs found with the rock strat from this period.

Miocene period, 23 to 5 million years ago, is another from Greek, where meion 'less' and kainos 'new' means literally 'less recent' because this period has fewer marine invertebrates than the following.

Pliocene, from 5 million to 2.5 million years ago, was named by Sir Charles Lyell and, once again, comes from the Greek. Here pleion 'more' and kainos 'new' was chosen to mean 'continuation of the recent', a reference to the fossil molluscs found within these rocks which are essentially the same as seen today.

Pleistocene, from 2.5 million to just 11,700 years ago, comes from the Greek pleistos 'mostly' and kainos 'new', and shows this is almost as recent as the ages get.

Holocene has only been around sinc 11,700 years ago and means 'entirely recent' from the Greek holos kainos.

These time spans are further divided into periods, epochs, and ages and all with much more imaginative names than simply 2017. Happy New Year.

Canada's Provinces

Having recently been reminded of how the name of Canada being named for a tiny area around the St Lawrence where the Iroquoi referred to their kanata or ‘village’, I thought it a good idea to examine the origins of the names of the territories. These twelve names have a variety of origins, some simplistic, others transferred from the Old World, and even those from the indigenous languages.

Alberta's name is down to the Scottish Marquis of Lorne, the Governor General of Canada, who named it after his wife Princess Louise Caroline Alberta in 1882.

British Colombia shares an origin with the US District of Columbiia in being named after Christopher Columbus, although this was much later than the US names and not known as such until 1858.

Manitoba is a province named after Lake Manitoba, itself from the Cree tribe's name for the island in the centre of the lake which they called Manatuapa or 'great spirit' as they regarded this as the home of said spirit.

New Brunswick is named to honour King George III in 1784 when it was separated from Nova Scotia (see below). George was not only the third George to be king of England but also the third of the House of Hanover, also referred to as Brunswick.

Newfoundland is possibly the most simplistic English place name anywhere. Discovered by John Cabot, an Italian-born Englishman, in 1497 he never actually named it such but is first seen in a document of the following year when it is simply said to be 'the new-found land'. Correctly the territory is Newfoundland and Labrador, where the English name of the island was translated to Portuguese as Terre-Nueve. The Portuguese exploration of this region is also seen in the naming of Labrador, itself directly from the surname of the navigator Joao Fernandes Lavrador. Hence the dog taking its name from the region and often abbreviated to just 'lab' should correctly be called a 'lav'. Also of note is the name given to some parts as New Britain, named as this was north of what was known as New France in the 17th century. This all started in 1612 with Welsh captain Thomas Button when he spent the winter on the shoreline of Hudson Bay at a place he called Nelson on the shores of the Nelson River. He called the region 'New Wales' and erected a sign telling others who came here. Nobody arrived until 1619 when Captain Luke Foxe discovered the sign and referred to the lands north of the mouth of the Nelson River as New North Wales and that to the south as New South Wales.

North West Territories is another requiring no explanation other than to say it is referred to as being 'north west' of Rupert's Land. A much better name is the earlier Inuktitut name of Nunatsiaq or 'beautiful land'. In the earliest days it was proposed the name should be changed to Denendeh, an Athabaskan word meaning 'our land'. This was rejected along with the rather amusing idea this should be known as simply 'Bob', which likely began as a joke but attracted a lot of interest until the joke ceased to be funny.

Nova Scotia is literally the Latin for 'New Scotland' and named by Sir William Alexander after being granted the area by James I. Previously the French had settled here and knew the place as Acadia.

Ontario, like Manitoba, is named after its lake. Here the Iroquois oniatar-io means 'beautiful' in referring to lake. The river and state of Ohio in the USA share this derivation.

Prince Edward Island was discovered in 1534 by the French explorer Jacques Cartier who called it Ile St Jean or St John's Island as it indeed became known when ceded to the British in 1763. In 1798 it was renamed after Prince Edward who was the fourth son of George III but, more importantly, the father of Queen Victoria.

Quebec takes the name of the city, one of the oldest known names on the North American continent and from the Algonquin kebec meaning 'where the river narrows'.

Yukon, as our final example, is thankfully an indigenous name. The region takes its name from the Yukon River which simply means 'big river'.

For those interested I looked at the origins of the names of Canadian cities a couple of years ago.

Mythology in Place Names

It is quite surprising to find the number of subjects which have contributed to our modern place names. I recently penned an article examining those places named as they were where certain culinary supplies could be found. Believe it or not there is a village in England named for being where a certain kind of tree was renowned as a source of skewers, of all things!

One of the more interesting sources is, as the title of the post indicates, the mythologies of our islands. A little thought and I recalled some interesting names and the stories behind them. I have taken examples from around Britain. Included are stories from the Cotswolds, the Pennines, the Lake District, Cornwall, the principality of Wales, and north of the border to Scotland.

The Devil’s Churchyard, Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire Hyde Farm gets its name from that Saxon measurement of land, the hide. Most often said to equal 120 acres, this is simply an average because the ‘measurement’ refers to productivity and not area. It is extremely difficult to quantify a hide, the reason can be seen in the accepted definition of “the amount of land required to feed one family for one year” where there are so many variables – the size of the family, quality of the soil, skills of the farmer, choice of crops, all have to be taken into consideration. During the twentieth century Hyde Farm had been associated with flight. Today it is owned by the local gliding club but was once a base of operations for the Royal Air Force. This military presence had the effect of isolating the farmworkers as much as it did the official personal who had made it their temporary home. Even after the end of the Second World War rationing remained in force for a number of years, making life hard for all and particularly so for those who were just starting on married life. It was a warm day when one farmworker broke for lunch. Recently married, both he and his wife worked long hours and would have looked forward to the few hours each day they spent together. Perhaps that was where the young man’s mind went when he entered a small copse away from the heat of the sun and cab of the tractor to open his lunch box. Having just taken a second bite his thoughts were interrupted by a most awful noise from the depths of the copse. Looking up he saw a mist and, as he watched, it began to gather into a most unnatural form. This was enough for the poor man who fled, leaping into his tractor and driving off as fast as the lumbering farm machine would allow. Not being a local man he was unaware of the reputation of the copse as a place of evil. An area where no bird was heard to sing, of inexplicable darkness, where chills were felt on the warmest of days. Many years before the community, tired of trecking to neighbouring villages for Sunday worship, had asked for their own church to be built and this field had been selected. Agreement was reached and eventually work started. Foundations were laid down and walls rose reaching half their eventual height. During the night something happened and the sight which greeted the workers when they returned next morning astonished them. Before them were no walls but a collection of stone blocks strewn around the site but not seemingly having fallen. They built them back up again but, once more, they returned next day to find the walls dismantled. Four more times this happened and the workers abandoned the site. No reason was ever found for this act of superhuman vandalism, yet the community soon offered their own explanation. Ever since this field has been known as the Devil’s Churchyard. N ear here is Hanging Hill Field where Edge Farm takes its name from the hamlet, itself referring to its position on the edge of the Cotswold Hills. The field name comes as no surprise, there are many ‘hanging’ names coming from Old English hangra describing it as ‘overhanging’ or looming over the land below. Many of these names have attracted ominous and macabre definitions, examples where creative etymologies have survived as they are much more interesting than the true definition. Yet in the case of Hanging Hill Field, which seems so obviously to be situated in an area where the less glamorous definition fits perfectly, the reverse is the case. During a discussion one evening a labourer was bragging of his prowess with the scythe. He boasted long and loud of how this particular field posed no problems and could be mown by him on his own in but a single day. Remember he had no modern equipment, merely a scythe which he wielded by hand. Likely much of his purported ability came from the bottle and his companions at the local inn had soon wagered heavily against him accomplishing such a formidable task. It will come as no surprise to learn he failed. The next time he was seen he was dead, hanging from a tree at the end of a noose. Whether his suicide was due to embarrassment or because he could not afford to settle his losses, we shall never know. No mention of the name of Hanging Hill Field is found before the story. To this day reports continue of the ghostly sound of the labourer, an eerie swishing of his blade as he continues to cut the stems as midnight approaches.

Devil’s Mustard Hill, Stenkrith in the Pennines Place names can be transferred from one feature to another. Hills can be named from rivers and vice versa and in the Eden Valley is just such an example. Nearby Kirkby Stephen is Stenkrith Park and Devil’s Mustard Hill. Here we find a hill named from a feature in the valley below. Here the River Eden tumbles over rocks and boulders on its way to the sea at the Solway Firth. Even during the summer months when the river level is at its lowest this is still a turbulent river. When in spate the current is a frightening sight to behold. For those who know where to look among the tree-lined banks it is possible to see a feature either in or out of the stream bed, depending upon the water level, which is the origin of the name of the hill above. The crystal-clear water enables us to see strange circular holes in rocks here. This is the result of untold centuries of erosion by pebbles swirling around in the current. Although the origin of these holes is clear, it has not stopped the idea of these being a result of the Devil milling his mustard being perpetuated down the centuries.

Dunmail Raise in the Lake District Dunmail was the last king of Cumberland. Whilst he may or may not have existed little of what is known seems to have any basis in fact, making him as legendary as King Arthur. What is fact is the historical record from the year 945AD. The Saxon King Edmund I led an army which conquered Strathclyde and enabled him to cede the Dunmail’s kingdom to Malcolm I of Scotland, Edmund’s ally in the campaign. From this point legend takes over and speaks of the beaten Dunmail retreating into the Lake District with the combined Saxon and Scots forces in hot pursuit. Heavily outnumbered, Dunmail decided to face his opponents in most defensible spot he could reach, a pass linking Grasmere and Thirlmere. However his position was hopeless and he was killed, some stories say at the hands of Edmund himself. His sons were blinded and his supporters ordered to pile the rocks on top of the dead king’s remains. Those rocks can still be seen today as the cairn known as Dunmail Raise. The second element is from Old Norse hreysi or ‘cairn’. Not all Dunmail’s men were captured or killed. Some made good their escape with the crown of the king of Cumberland. They made for the 3,117 feet high Helvellyn or, more precisely, Grisedale Tarn which is found on its slopes 1,400 feet below the summit. Here the crown was flung far out to sink into the depths of this mountainside lake. It is said the souls of the long-dead warriors return once each year to Grisdale. Having retrieved the crown from the lake they march to Dunmail Raise, rap on the stones with their spears and hear the reply from their king: “Not yet, not yet; wait awhile my warriors.”

The Merry Maidens, Cornwall Near St Buryan is this ring of stones also known as Dawn’s Men, itself from the Cornish Dans Maen or ‘stone dance’. This circle is comprised of nineteen granite megaliths, each approximately four feet in height and approximately ten to twelve feet apart. These form a circle a little over eighty feet in diameter. This is not a perfect circle. A larger gap to the east gives the impression of a missing stone but archaeological evidence does not support this, indeed it suggests there were probably only eighteen stones originally, perhaps the extra megalith coming from a second circle to the south just 250 yards away but this was destroyed before the end of the nineteenth century. Legend has it this was the result of nineteen maidens punished by being turned to stone. Their only crime was dancing on the Sabbath. To the northeast are two standing stones, each ten feet high and known as the Pipers. Again turning them to stone was their punishment by being turned to stone for playing for the dancers on a Sunday. Of course the three hundred yards between the two would make hearing the pipers rather difficult for the dancers, yet folklore has the answer there, too. It is said the pipers heard the church clock in St Buryan strike midnight, thus making it Sunday. The pipers turned and ran up the hill, away from the dancers, who continued their dance without music.

Bryn Saith Marchog can only be in the principality of Wales A place name meaning ‘the hill of the seven horsemen or knights’ and named from a local legend. It recalls the seven men left here by Bran the Blessed to guard his lands while he was away in Ireland. Earlier Bran had given the hand of his sister Branwen to the Irish king Matholwch. Much feasting ensues to celebrate the betrothal but the arrival of their half-brother Efnisien puts an end to the festivities for he is greatly displeased he was not consulted. He takes his anger out on Matholwch’s horses who are mutilated. Bran ensures peace is restored by offering a magical cauldron to his Iish counterpart, it having the power of restoring life to the dead, although the individual is left mute for the rest of his or her days. When Branwen travels to Ireland with her husband she is treated badly, despite bearing him a son named Gwern. She summons help by taming a starling and sending a message across the Irish Sea to her homeland. When the British king and his forces are spotted, the Irish retreat, destroying every bridge to prevent pursuit. Yet the giant form of Bran lays himself down for his men to use him as a living bridge. Matholwch tries to appease the invaders but eventually terrible bloody war is waged. Eventually just six individuals remain alive, Branwen and five of her brother’s men returning home with the severed head of Bran the Blessed. Not an Irishman remained and the race would have been extinct had it not been for five pregnant women found residing in Wales, who returned to repopulate their homeland. Branwen dies of grief that two lands have been decimated solely because of her. Meanwhile the head of Bran the Blessed was given the burial he had instructed. First his men feasted for seven years in Harlech, accompanied by three singing birds and their former king’s cranium. Travelling to Gwales in Penfro they make camp for four score (eighty) years, then finally head to London where the head is buried in the White Mount ensuring it it faced France. Legend maintains that as long as the head is undisturbed no invaders could cross the sea to Britain.

Novar is north of the border to Scotland. A place name from Scottish Gaelic taigh an fhuamhair and describing ‘the house of the giant’. Local legends point to just one individual associated with this place, the fabled giant Fingal otherwise known as Finn MacCool. This legendary hunter of Irish mythology was named Deimne as a child but acquired the nickname Finn when his hair turned white prematurely. The Scottish name Fingal does not appear before the eighteenth century and the writings of the poet James Macpherson, this probably indicates the poet chose the name to fit the legends. Finn MacCool’s best known exploit sees him up against the giant Cuhullin. While sucking his thumb, this enabled him to see anything he chose no matter where, he saw his rival intended to confront him. Knowing he was sure to lose in direct competition, he turned to his wife Oona for assistance. First she dressed Finn as a baby and hides him away, then turned her hand to make griddle cakes. When Cuhullin arrived he tried to intimidate the giant’s wife by breaking rocks with just his middle finger. However she has the last laugh when Cuhullin bites into one of her griddle cakes and chips his tooth. Oona accused Cuhullin of being boastful and weak, saying her husband eats the cakes every day without trouble. When Finn apparently returns, he eats a griddle cake without any problem. Cuhullin suspects foul play and Oona did indeed hide griddle irons inside the cake she offered him but not that of her husband. When Cuhullin put his finger into the mouth of Finn to see for himself how sharp these teeth really were, the latter bit off the tip of the middle finger, the source of his rival’s great strength and size. Cuhullin shrank down to the size of a mere man and fled lest he be beaten by the giant Finn.

I would welcome any suggestions for themes or subjects, or even specific words to examine the origins, meanings and etymologies. I’d be delighted to hear from you.