CHAT: Place names (was: Pascua)

Barry Garcia <Barry_Garcia@...> wrote:


>CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>> Is it usual in your (con)cultures to name places
>>after dates and festivities?
>
>Well, I haven't started to really name places in my conculture, but, i
>decided that many towns in the Saalangal's world are named after patron
>deities, or the towns specialization, like the main city, and harbor town
>of Tasok, which means "harbor".

Yes, it sometimes sounds unimaginative, but it's how places are named
(unless the founders are poets or conlangers, I guess). I recently
named some towns in Thaqulm and I had to stop and think... I came up
with the following:

    Gä'misan (_gämb misan_, 'dry mud')
    Mísanfut (_misan [i] futrar_, 'mud slide')
    Duithmer (_duith [i] mer_ 'pebbles valley')
    Dagnarion (_dagon-arion_ 'hunter['s] camp')

and the favourites:

    Nimbit (lit. 'boring')
    Throsterre (_throst erre_ 'dead deer')
    Vensne (_veng sne_ 'black swamp')

(it's like the places that the Simpsons/Thompsons were proposed to live
in by the Witness Protection Program's officials!). Some names are more
historically based and poetic, like Darvidhion 'First Step'.

>In California, most of the old colonial towns when the state was Alta
>California, keep their Spanish designations, even though most residents,
>unless they know Spanish, dont know what the names mean.
I love those long Spanish names! The typical Argentine town was
named things like "San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca" or "Santa
Fe de la Vera Cruz de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo" (though more, er,
profane names exist, like towns called "Small Beer Pack" and "Large
Beer Pack" (I swear I'm not making this up!).


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  "... When all men on earth think, day and night, about the
   Zahir, which one will be a dream and which one a reality?"
                              Jorge Luis Borges, _The Zahir_