On language and places...
So, I've been doing some reading on toponomy, lately, largely because I've got an empire of post-Roman succubi to derive cities and roads for, and I notice this trend to 'oh, we don't know what the name of this place means, but we're sure there's a linguistic root we haven't found yet'. What? No.
No, really. No.
Has it never occurred to anyone that, well, people put sounds together because they sound good? That, you know, maybe there's no Pelasgian or Proto-Latin root for this town's name because someone just sort of went, 'I want to live here, and I want to call it something that sounds cool when I say it'. Because there's a long history of shit like that. People name their kids like that, sometimes.
I grant that place names that actually indicate something about the place are going to be way the hell more common, which they really are, but I can't help but expect that there will be -- that there are places where the names don't make sense because they're not supposed to. They're just gibberish that sounds cool when you say it.
No, really. No.
Has it never occurred to anyone that, well, people put sounds together because they sound good? That, you know, maybe there's no Pelasgian or Proto-Latin root for this town's name because someone just sort of went, 'I want to live here, and I want to call it something that sounds cool when I say it'. Because there's a long history of shit like that. People name their kids like that, sometimes.
I grant that place names that actually indicate something about the place are going to be way the hell more common, which they really are, but I can't help but expect that there will be -- that there are places where the names don't make sense because they're not supposed to. They're just gibberish that sounds cool when you say it.