From: Douglas Greville (dgrev@iinet.net.au)
Date: Sun Dec 05 2004 - 02:30:31 PST
Chance
> When I was in England in 1989, I hit every museum I could drag the old man
> to. One of them was the RAAF Museum at the old airfield at Middle Wallop.
> (I love how all the names sound as though they were plagiarized from Beatrix
> Potter.)
Yes it does boggle the imagination as to what actually did happen there
in the past for names like that to have been aquired. Just whose middle
got walloped?
Could one of our Pommie members please explain just what all those
quaint English locality and town names mean?
Were they Roman, or Viking battlefield leftovers, comments on events or
just the Brits trying to confuse the French the next time they invaded?
eg
- Biggleswade (probably nothing to do with the boy's hero)
- Blackpool (now why would anyone call a holiday town that, why not
"Golden Brook", better chance of attracting clientelle?)
- Bognor Regis (handy toilet stop for royalty?)
- Cerne Abbas (rude hillside carvings if memory serves correct?)
- Chipping Norton (a carpenter called Norton?)
- Didcot (Gipsy town?)
- Hatch Beauchamp (breeding site for French royalty?)
- Hemel Hempstead (keh?)
- Street (huh? Why call a town "Street"?)
- Tongue (the mind boggles)
- Tow Law (problems with boats?)
- Uttoxeter (keh?)
- Watchet (Watch what?)
- Wrotham - no, not Batman's home town - pronounced "Root-em" or so the
locals told me!
I won't even think about those horrific Welsh town names, if anything
could give you a dislocated tongue from trying to pronounce a local
name, they could.
Regards
Doug
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Armoured Vehicles Collector
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