CHAT: silly (English place) names

At 12:18 pm +1100 18/3/01, D Tse wrote:
>>
>> And the urge to change names to attract tourists was not confined to 19th
>> cent. Wales.  In England the seaside resort hitherto known simply as
>> "Weston-on-Sea" became, and still remains, "Weston-super-mare" (tho, alas,
>> the last word is pronounced as tho it were a female horse!)
>
>A female horse with superpowers!
..and to us non-rhotics it sounds as tho the super-powered female horse is
also equipped with a couple of six-shooters and wearing a cowboy hat   :)
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At 9:20 pm -0600 17/3/01, Eric Christopherson wrote:
[snip]
>
>And would "super mare" even mean "near the sea" in Latin?
No - Weston-juxta-mare would've made more sense.

>I don't know much
>(classical) Latin, but in my mind it conjures up images of a town floating
>on the water ;)
Quite correct - I mean the picture in your mind  :)

The actual town is only next to sea at high tide; at low tide it seems like
a mile away  :)

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At 4:56 am -0500 18/3/01, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>Ray wrote:
>>But to get back to length of Welsh names.  They are no longer than many
>>good ol' English place names like, e.g. Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
>>Chapel-en-le-Frith, Piddletrenthide, Chorton-cum-Hardy,
>>Bourton-on-the-Water, Mapleborough Green etc etc etc.
>
>Speaking of English place-names, Bury St. Edmunds is pretty cool.
Yep - and the one that always amused me when I was a kid was
"Barrow-in-Furness" which I sort of heard as "barrow in furnace", and
pictured our wheel-barrow being incinerated   :)

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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