How Tube stations got their unusual names (2017) | Hacker News Reader

How Tube stations got their unusual names (2017)

bbc.com

58 pointsohjeez24 comments

I wonder why this is positioned in terms of tube stations?

The answer for every single one is: because that's the name of the area the tube station is in.

So why isn't the article just about where do these places get their names from? Why the extra level of abstraction to make it about the tube stations?

Probably because a tube map is both familiar to many people and presents a much more restricted set of names to choose from.

That's not exactly true or at least the truth is often a lot more complicated than that.

For example: Turnham Green tube isn't at Turnham Green. It's at a park called Acton Green common (which also isn't in Acton, it's in Chiswick). Turnham Green (the actual green) is actually closer to Chiswick Park tube, which is also near a park which isn't called Chiswick Park.

Turnham Green tube station is named that because it's where the battle of Turnham Green happened in the English Civil war.

> The answer for every single one is: because that's the name of the area the tube station is in.

> That's not exactly true

It is exactly true!

Covent Garden tube station is in Covent Garden.

Elephant & Castle is in Elephant & Castle.

Cockfosters tube station is in Cockfosters.

Tooting Bec tube station is in Tooting Bec.

Knightsbridge tube station is in Knightsbridge.

Maida Vale tube station is in Maida Vale.

Aldgate tube station is in Aldgate.

Piccadilly Circus tube station is in Piccadilly Circus.

Queensway tube station is on Queensway.

Shepherd’s Bush tube station is in Shepherd’s Bush.

> For example: Turnham Green

That counter example isn't in the article!

I didn't say anything about any tube station names not in the article.

I'll go first; are you okay with Central Standard rules?

Stockwell

Nonsense... according to the Revised Standard Rules of 1892, subsection 19, paragraph A stroke 2, a player whose name starts with the letter 'a' may not play Stockwell on the first move of the game!

Can we have the ruling? There's an exception to that rule for gentlemen carrying a pocket-watch, but I'm unclear if it applies to Central Standard.

quite funny when translating them into German:

"London Underground Map Freely Translated into German" https://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/ubahn/m/londo...

Wasserklo made me chuckle.

I sometimes do that for Berlin stations. E.g. Gesundbrunnen ⇨ Healthy fountain or well well. Hermannstr ⇨ man man street.

That's great! I saw a similar map of the Sydney CityRail network, with anagrams.

Icy Trail: https://transportsydney.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/icy-trai...

CityRail (original): https://berry.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/sydney-to-be...

Oh! Thank you, that's brilliant. (Hate Sperm here)

The Infanta de Castile (Elephant & Castle) etymology is quite compelling, and could presumably be the origin of the cutler's trademark.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worshipful_Company_of_Cutler... has a heraldic description of the cutler's arms which has "... at the top a head of an elephant [cut clean with red?] with golden tusks" (my own interpretation of the language used), no mention of a castle.

The article directly states that this is station is named that because of the guilds coat of arms.

Yes, I'm just saying it seems they could've got it backwards.

Something I think I would miss if I ever moved to the US (particularly the west coast): all of your place names sound like they were made up by property developers or estate agents. Maplewood this and Ruby Valley that. In the Old World (or at least England), every place name has a story - Cheapside, Scunthorpe, Billericay, Westward Ho! (including he exclamation mark), etc. Maybe those don't sound like places you'd want to live, but then again it doesn't make every place feel like a product in a catalogue.

Someone once defined suburbs as "The place where they name the streets after all the trees they cut down"

I always wondered about Elephant & Castle. Turns out it is named after a medieval guild of craftsmen whose crest included an elephant carrying a castle. Who would have thought.

These place names are interesting no matter where you look.

E.g you can look at the Moscow metro and the history of station names, and see how they’ve been updated over time and what they’re in reference to. E.g Октубрьская.

Or in Barcelona where you have, say, Paral-lel, named so because the main avenue runs parallel to the equator.

I heard that one of the Russian words for a train station comes from a misunderstanding. When a Russian delegation came to London to see the Victorian train network they were taken to see Vauxhall station. They asked what it was called (the station) and were told "Vauxhall", so in Russia stations are called "вокзальный" which sounds something like we in England would say Vauxhall.

Вокзал in Russian is the train station (or less commonly to large bus stations or to airports with appropriate modifiers: автовокзал, аэровокзал). For pronunciation and etymology refer to [1]:

Borrowed from English Vauxhall (former site of a pleasure garden). The ending was influenced by зал (zal, “hall”). The spelling фоксал (foksal) attested in 1777 is from French facs-hall, from the same English source. The transportation sense derives from an epithet for the Pavlovsk train station building, which at one time served as both a passenger lounge and a place of entertainment.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%B7%D0%B...

The note about what circus means in Picadilly Circus taught me something about where I grew up: the roundabout where some 5 (or 6 I forget) roads meet at one end of the high street in Tankerton, Kent is called Tankerton Circus.

Here, Fiveways roundabout connects four roads. It's not grand enough for "circus". No-one knows exactly how many roads enter and leave the Magic Roundabout in Swindon. It changes with the phases of the moon and quantums.

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