(Untitled)

[oh_meow]

When I was at school (in the UK) there was a geography lesson you were guaranteed to get several times on how you could often tell the origins of a place by its name. It ran something like this:

Comments

[six_crazy_guys]

Never seen anything similar. Sorry. I did read aboutpalcename origins,but it certainlywas not part of any curiculum.

[oh_meow]

I suppose canada would be a big old mix like america, of immigrants bringing their own names and just applying them because they felt like it, and mangling the names which the people already living there called places.

[six_crazy_guys]

it's not that bad, actually... Alright, there's quite a few mangled native names (though not always that badly mangled), but most of the other names are straightforward French or English names, A few of which are after people.

[bayrose]

I believe -wich is a suffix indicating a salt producing town. I believe it came from the Romans, or Wikipedia leads me to think so.

[marnanel]

Isn't it just cognate with -vik?

[oh_meow]

But Norwich is nowhere near the sea, it's surrounded by miles of flats and canals, and I'm not sure the vikings settled that far down.

[marnanel]

I never said the Vikings named it! Old English had a word "wic" which became "wich" in Middle English, which I think is cognate with the Norse "vik". I think it meant something like "port", but I don't have a dictionary here: Norwich may not be near the sea, but it's definitely navigable to.

[markusn]

Some of the above also apply, however. In Alemannic regions there is x-ingen, where x's people live. sometimes this is "standard-Germanized" to "-inden" (Gelterkinden in my region is an example) In Bavaria this becomes "-ing". With the world famous result of "Fucking"...

Then there's "-heim", (home), lots of these in Alsatia.

"-rüti" or "-röti" is also common, meaning a clearing made by fire. This is more commonly describing an area, not a settlement, though.

"-statt" can also mean "Stätte" (place, usually of an event), not city or town.

"-au" combined with the name of a river means the flooding area of said river and is often ound in names of towns.

"-ach" is also common. Don't know what it means, though.

[muckefuck]

Alemmanic -ach has at least two sources: One would be Romano-Celtic -acum (e.g. Brisiacum, mod. Breisach). The suffix attaches to personal names and is extremely common (with a wide variety of outcomes, e.g. Pouilly, Cognac, Stenay, etc.) in France. The other is OHG -aha "water" (cognate to Latin aqua) and is found chiefly in river names (e.g. Schwarzach, Werra, etc.).

[markusn]

Thanks. Is OHG -aha "water" also the source of the common river name "Aa" then?

[lotusbiosm]

We don't really have as many of those in the US, and we didn't really learn about it in school. But you can tell things about who founded a place by its name, and nearly everyone grew up near something with a Native American name that only locals can pronounce (like Schenectady, or, Oneida, which I think should be easy, but it's given people problems). We learned about "Chester" in Latin class though, which is cool because it's my family name, so when people ask what it means I can tell them.
I grew up in a town called New Hartford, named by a guy from Hartford Connecticut, I think. And we have a Utica, Syracuse, Troy, Poland, Rome, Russia, Paris, Mexico, all in New York State. And a Rochester. Sometimes you can tell that a town was named for where the people came from (like New York), and sometimes it's meant to be an allusion to classical civilization.

[marnanel]

I'm nitpicking, but New York was named after James, Duke of York (the future James II of England and VII of Scotland).

[lotusbiosm]

Yeah, I know it was named after the Duke of York, especially since the earliest settlers were Dutch and had named places other things before the English renamed them. So it's still evidence of the origin of the settlers, or at least of the landowners, though in a less direct way. New England would have been a better example though.

[markusn]

As a Swiss it warms my heart to find place names like New Berne and New Glarus on th US map...

[lyssiae]

You got that lesson at school? I only learnt about British place names when I was studying Old English...the Netherlands. Colour me jealous! :)

[lyssiae]

+in in there somewhere...

[oh_meow]

had it repeatedly, junior and senior school.

[koffie_addict]

i think i learned it in the first year of English at uni.. in the netherlands as well