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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

You have to love the s/weird/unusual [1] names of places in the UK (and it looks like a beautiful area from the small picture):

> Tintern, in the Wye Valley, Monmouthshire

There's also plenty of "upon the"s and "x-in-y" (ie: Henly-in-Arden). Not just the England but seems just as common in Scotland, or even more common.

I can imagine the early computer systems of the postal organization having to deal with these quirks.

[1] apparently "weird" is being taken as bad or something. I like weird.

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> There's also plenty of "upon the"s and "x-in-y" (ie: Henly-in-Arden).

These are common in many languages.

Even in England: Weston-super-Mare is just latin for "Weston by (literally "over") the sea".

And constructs like "Stratford-upon-Avon" (to disambiguate from other Stratfords) are pretty common in most places; consider "Frankfurt am Main" and "Frankfurt an der Oder" all of which specify that their town is the one on this specific river.

Also a lot of those European place names (ignoring the prepositional affixes) are themselves compounds of other nice properties.

I don't know why this construct is uncommon in the USA.

There's Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. There's also a lot of "New" versions of older European locations as a way to distinguish them from other similarly named places when there aren't any rivers nearby, I guess, like New Jersey. Don't forget, a lot of places in the US were also already named before European settlers arrived.

It might also simply not be needed as a matter of practicality. There are many Springfields, but probably not very many per state (although I know New Jersey has two) and certainly a max of one per zipcode. Sure Springfield, MA 12345 isn't as whimsical as Springfield-upon-the-Connecticut (or whatever) in terms of distinguishing it from Springfield, NJ 08765, but it gets the job done.

It's worth noting, though, that Manchester MA was renamed 30 years ago to sound quaintly affluent -- in pointed contrast to the working-class mill town of Manchester NH, just over the border.

Ah, that explains why I’d never heard of the Massachusetts town before the film came out (and was surprised to see it on the map) — it didn’t exist (by that name) when I was in school there.

> There's also a lot of "New" versions of older European locations as a way to distinguish them from other similarly named places when there aren't any rivers nearby, I guess

A whole lot of those “New” places (unsurprisingly, given patterns of human habitation more generally) have rivers nearby.

> There's Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA.

And Cardiff by the Sea, Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Corona del Mar, CA.

At some point the USPS tried to limit states to one town per name. Buda, TX was originally named Du Pre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buda,_Texas

The "New" towns in the US make some sense in that they mean "Our" town of that name. Here in the UK we have towns like Newcastle where the newness has lost its novelty after a 1000 years.

> I don't know why this construct is uncommon in the USA.

In the US we use a comma. Buffalo, NY - as opposed to Buffalo in any other state. (MN, TX, and WI each have a city of buffalo - perhaps more, that is where I stopped searching). States in the US tend to be very careful about not allowing duplication of names so this is enough for the most part.

> States in the US tend to be very careful about not allowing duplication of names so this is enough for the most part.

True, although if you include unincorporated towns, there are a lot of naming conflicts, at least in my home state of Indiana.

Marion, for example, is the name of a small city an hour from Marion County, the central county that encompasses Indianapolis, and also the name of a small unincorporated community an hour in a different direction.

Plus Marian University is in Marion County, not Marion the city, although unlike Harvard, MA vs Harvard University, I doubt that causes much confusion.

Hollywood, FL, gets me every time. :o)

Once I got lost and ended up in Melbourne.

I found it quite amusing.

Despite having been born in Melbourne I’ve never been there!

A residential community enjoyed by early NASA personnel.

There's also Pasadena . . . and Pasadena, Texas.

Nearby town is Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a Ft. Lauderdale suburb.

Miami . . . and Miami, Ohio.

In north Florida there's Howey-in-the-Hills.

And in Texas, Cut-n-Shoot.

Howey-in-the-Hills was a notorious speed trap. Don't know if it still is.

In the last few decades, the whole state has gravitated toward misguided enforcement along these lines for more than just drivers.

Like they say "Come on vacation, leave on probation!"

How about Florida, MA?

"Springfield is a famously common place-name in the English-speaking world, especially in the United States. According to the U.S. Geological Survey there are currently 33 populated places named Springfield in 25 U.S. states throughout the United States,[1] including five in Wisconsin; additionally, there are at least 36 Springfield Townships, including 11 in Ohio. Database studies reveal that there are several more common U.S. place-names than Springfield, including Fairview and Midway."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_(toponym)

Notably: Springfield - A small rather anonymous town in the U.S. which Cobra secretly operated as a base.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_(G.I._Joe)

New York has quite a few on-river names: Annandale-, Castleton-, Croton-, Hastings-, and Grand View-on-Hudson - maybe a legacy of the era in which the state was colonized.

Those are the stations when they put you on the Wolverine up to Annandale. Ain’t never going back, though.

Well dan.

I think it's universal Shanghai translates to "upon the sea"

> Shanghai translates to "upon the sea"

Does it? "Upon the sea" would be 海上, not 上海. 上海 would have 上 as a verb, something more like "get onto the sea".

上 preceding the name might also be interpreted as "upper", as in 上卷 "Volume 1 (of 2)" / 下卷 "Volume 2 (of 2)". Is there a paired 下海 attested somewhere?

(Chinese place names involving some kind of spatial relationship are extremely common. But note that they all use normal grammar: 关中 "within (中) the pass (关)" / 关外 "outside (外) the pass"; 山西 "west (西) of the mountain (山) / 山东 "east (东) of the mountain"; 湖北 "north (北) of the lake (湖) / 湖南 "south (南) of the lake"; etc. etc. etc. etc.)

The reverse ordering [modifier noun] is common in Classical and Middle Chinese.

Just like [noun modifier] is no longer standard English, but we do keep phrases with that ordering from Middle English (e.g. Surgeon General)

> but we do keep phrases with that ordering from Middle English (e.g. Surgeon General)

That's not from Middle English, it's from French.

Which Middle English was heavily influenced by.

Middle English was closer to French than modern English in many ways-English monarchs still spent time in Normandy and claimed the French crown for generations after William the Conqueror.

Can you provide some citations for locative prepositions appearing before their nouns? I am not widely read in classical Chinese, but all the examples I've turned up have used the normal order.

e.g. 孟子 1A/3 河內凶，則移其民於河東，移其粟於河內 (strongly suggesting that the current naming practices were also current 2200 years ago); 庄子秋水 13 我知之濠上也 (ordinary positioning).

You're totally right, I was confusing modifiers with Chinese's general looseness towards word class, a tendency even more pronounced in Classical Chinese [1]. That means what looks like modifier/preposition could be functioning as a verb instead.

So my mother-in-law just said '上海不在海上', i.e. 海上 is closer to the literal meaning of 'on top of the ocean (physically)', which the city is not.

Perhaps 上 here acts as a verb or gerund ((going up / on the way) to the ocean)? 下海 means 'going (down) to the ocean'.

The rabbit hole here can get deep (and thanks for drawing me in!), this book [2] goes in-depth about how word class and word order influenced one another as Chinese developed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese_grammar#Word...

[2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/r9WO6g5mqi8C?hl=en&gb...

> Perhaps 上 here acts as a verb or gerund ((going up / on the way) to the ocean)? 下海 means 'going (down) to the ocean'.

This is possible, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the normal way to express that is 下海. The ocean is pretty much by definition both "down"stream and downhill of everything; approaching the ocean by going up is semantically unnatural. My guess above of "get onto the ocean" (i.e. "set sail") was drawing a parallel to 上路 "get on the road" / "start traveling".

> 海上 is closer to the literal meaning of 'on top of the ocean (physically)', which the city is not.

I don't see this as a huge obstacle; "upon the sea" has the same literal meaning but isn't surprising in an English place name, though "by the sea", with the correct literal meaning, isn't surprising either.

> These are common in many languages.

Yup. There are plenty of them in Italy, we don't use dashes but there are various towns with generic prefixes and suffixes. Reggio Emilia and Reggio Calabria were just "regium", Latin for region or town, and at some point they gained the extra name (which refers to the wider area) to differentiate them. Near my hometown we have Casalecchio di Reno, which means "bunch of houses over the river Reno"; there are loads of river-denominated towns all over Italy. And there are loads of "Castello Something", since castello means castle or castrum - as you might imagine, there are quite a few of those across the country.

Reggio Calabria Italian name comes from the Greek name Rhegion. It was founded by Greek colonists pretty much at the same time as the foundation of Rome. Reggio Emilia name comes from the Latin regium.

Under Roman rule, Reggio Calabria was Regium too. And its original foundation is actually likely to pre-date the Greeks...

I never denied it, I just explained that the origin of the name is completely different and it was translated in Latin from the ancient Greek name.

One example in Bernese Oberland I like: There's a ski resort Lenk. People say they live «in the Lenk» or they travel «to the Lenk». In German you have to know that the genus of «Lenk» is femimine and use the dative or the accusative: «in der Lenk» or «zur Lenk».

That's very weird but even to me omitting the article and preposition sounds wrong. By the way «to the» is contracted from the long for «zu der» to «zur».

Compared to «Frankfurt am Main» there's no specification of a river or something else. It's just the location name where the article and preposition is often required.

It's the same with some countries' names. Switzerland always has a female article in German: you can spend your vacation in France ("in Frankreich") but Switzerland requires an article ("in der Schweiz"). Same with Iran and Iraq, which always require a male article, and some plural countries (Netherlands, US). Note that the full list is quite a bit longer: https://deutschtraining.org/deutsche-grammatik/artikel/laend...

Typically the origin of such toponyms is in abbreviation of a designator (as happened for example with den Haag, where the full name is still survives in official documents), rather than proper noun, where the abbreviation becomes a proper noun.

In English this rarely survives except for odd cases such as The City of London (which is a small, legally distinct entity from what most people refer to as London). English is happy to drop articles when they don't reduce ambiguity, hence countries (Austria, Scotland, but retained in the descriptive name The United States of America) or Bend, Oregon (a case similar to Lenk).

In England years ago we would visit Weston-under-Lizard (the town of Weston in the shadow of the hill Lizard — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston-under-Lizard). That’s my favorite name of this type.

Never thought I’d see my part of the world on here; used to drive through Weston under Lizard every day.

Some good place names in Shropshire, too, but Durham has my favourite with No Place and Pity Me.

Don’t forget Quaking Houses and Unthank!

I always thought Quebec was an odd name for a village located in County Durham. Pretty sure there's a California near Crook, too. Muggleswick near Consett is a good one.

And then over in Northumberland there's Once Brewed, Twice Brewed, Snodgrass.

I've always considered Nempnett Thrubwell to be setting a pretty high standard on the bizarre English place names index.

The Wallops (Nether Wallop, Middle Wallop, and Over Wallop) are good too

If you're interested, Wye comes from the name of the river, which means either to wander, or crooked hills. Either seem relevant given the strange way that the river wye goes from wide, slow meandering bends across floodplains into rapids through steep crooked valleys (as opposed to most rivers that start in mountains and end in floodplains.)

Monmouth is at the mouth of the river Monnow, a tributary of the Wye.

Keep unpacking meanings please, this is really interesting.

Where do Monnow and Tintern come from?

Oh dear. I lived three years in Tintern and five in Monmouth and can’t answer either of those!

According to Wikipedia:

The River Monnow derives its name from the Welsh (Cymraeg, Myn-wy) and translates to "swift water". (myn means swift, and wy is one of the many Welsh words for water).

The name Tintern may derive from the Welsh din + d/teyrn, meaning "rocks of the king".

Also a common term for a particular type of railway junction that resembles the river: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wye_(rail)

Tintern is a beautiful place, and Tintern Abbey is particularly so - plus it has an amazingly rich history.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintern_Abbey

Edited to add - Nice set of photos at the bottom of this page:

https://medievalheritage.eu/en/main-page/heritage/wales/tint...

A friend and I visited Wales during college and ran across Tintern Abbey quite by accident. We rented a car in London, and embarked on a drive from there to Oxford. We found a place to stay somewhere between Oxford and Tintern (not sure exactly where). Early the next day we got back on the road, and suddenly we beheld emerging out of the gloomy mist a majestic but decrepit building obviously of centuries-old origin. We inquired and learned its name: Tintern Abbey. The pictures at the bottom of the medievalheritage.eu link are what I remember seeing.

Also wonderful Wordsworth poem , perhaps his best.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45527/lines-composed-...

On a similar note there's also the wonderfully named Westward Ho! [1], exclamation mark included.

On looking up the link for the above I learned it also shares an exclamation mark with the incredible Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! [2] in Quebec.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westward_Ho! [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Louis-du-Ha!_Ha!

The Meaning of Liff - co-writen by Douglas Adams - does a very funny job of making up definitions to English place-names

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01qjjgw

You'd probably enjoy "St Andrew by the Wardrobe" then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe

Can confirm. When I was a child, I lived in an old Elizabethan building called Sexeys’s Hospital, founded by Lord Sexey.

Relevant Tom Scott video about Hill Hill Hill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUyXiiIGDTo

Understanding common place name elements helps a lot with reconstructing the history of places in the UK. As per [0], -ham, -ing, -ton, are old English, -by, -thorpe and others are Norse/Vikings. We've also had hundreds of years for the original names to change in spelling and pronunciation. Especially the French-derived ones.

I have to say that one of the small joys of doing geography A-level in England was finding the silly names on the detailed Ordnance Survey maps. There was always one or two that enlivened the dullest lessons on geomorphology, road networks, etc. I still find a lot of humour in these placenames. Exhibit A: Piddletrenthide [1] is one close to me, quite close to Tolpuddle. It's my belief from local knowledge that Piddletrenthide is pronounced with two hard 't's, i.e. Piddle - Trent - Hide. Perhaps if there are HN'ers from Piddletrenthide here, they can correct me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy_of_England#English

[1] https://www.visit-dorset.com/explore/piddletrenthide-and-pid...

Some maps and pics with wacky place names:

https://brilliantmaps.com/weird-place-names-uk/

https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/news/a7051/weirdest...

https://www.google.com/search?q=strangest+town+name&tbm=isch

It also has some great rock climbing along the same part of the wye, a mere ~100 meters at most if you go to wintours leap but you get some of the most beautiful views. My favorite spot for local summer trad climbing.

I've always liked that some houses in the UK have names rather than street numbers. Our Christmas card list includes "Sunnydale", "Lane Ends", and "The Old Rectory". The Royal mail computers must be pretty quirky indeed.

The postal system runs on post codes. It's a 5-8 letter code that usually identifies 1-20 ish addresses. You usually only need a door number and and a postcode to uniquely identify an address. There is free reverse look up as well.

Treat yourself to this map, you've earned it: https://marvellousmaps.com/stgs-great-british-place-names-ma...

Naming is one thing but how do you deal with “Number 1 London” as an address? Can’t even google it unless you know the full thing and use quotes. Supposedly still works...

This is common in Russian as well. See Rostov-na-Donu (Rostov-on-Don, Rostov on the Don River), Komsomolsk-na-Amur (Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Komsomolsk on the Amur river)...

Early systems of postal delivery were people trying to figure out where the bloody place was and saying it's the one on the Avon river.

What’s weird about that?

Well for one thing it didn't seem to transfer over to North America when the Brits (and French, etc) were naming towns and cities here in Canada, and the US...where I grew up. It's like a legacy thing.

It seems they were more likely to stick to singular words here in NA when naming regions. So it's interesting to me? Is that taboo or something?

I don't see how "King's Rocks" (Tintern) is more weird than, say, "Gathering Place By The Water" (Milwaukee)...

I think you guys are taking "weird" a bit too literally, I don't mean it in a negative way.

If it was common here in Canada then I wouldn't find it 'weird' or unusual would I? And I can assure you it's not very common. Even if there are exceptions.

Regardless that was not what the Brits (or whichever Euro empire) chose to eventually name Milwaukee, they chose Milwaukee. So that's a poor counterpoint...

I chose that example precisely because both of them are in the language of the former natives, now barely spoken in the area, and not in the language of the empire that conquered it. ;)

In the US, specifying the state seems to serve the same purpose of avoiding confusion. "Springfield, MA" and "Springfield, IL", as opposed to "Springfield-upon-Connecticut" and "Springfield-on-the-Lake".

Carmel-by-the-Sea

The place is called Tintern.

It's being described as "in the Wye Valley", but that's not part of the name.

I don't understand why this is a problem. It's a simple multi tier naming scheme. Don't Americans have Springfields everywhere?

No one said it was a problem, yikes. I regret bringing this up.

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