Re: OT: Place name constituents
| From: | Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, May 19, 2006, 16:50 |
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REPLY-TO WARNING! As ever, my ISP webmail doesn't behave nicely.
-----Original Message-----
>From: Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
>
>One of the spiffiest bits of place-name conlangery is
>the name of a ford in _The Phoenix Guards_ by
>Steven Brust. I can't cite it because my copy is loaned
>out; basically the aboriginals called it simply "ford"
>in their language, and each people who came along
>and grabbed the land after them took the previous name,
>perhaps mangled it to fit their own language's
>phonology, and added their own language's word
>for "ford". I think the final name was something like
>"Bengloalafurd", but I suspect I'm misspelling it because
>this only gets on Ghit.
This actually happened in England, with the hill now known as Torbenfalls Hill.
Having said that, Google provides zero hits for that name or any plausible
respellings, so it may be a myth. There is at least a Tor Hill in Lancashire.
Paul
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