Dear Mavis Enderby...
March Hare
Shipmate
in The Circus
I've always been intrigued by place-names that could also be personal names. England, in particular, has a profusion of villages with double-barreled names, so it's not surprising that it occasionally throws up a Peter Tavy or a Stanley Pontlarge. But does the same thing happen in other countries and in other languages?
Examples, please - English, Welsh, French, German or whatever!
Examples, please - English, Welsh, French, German or whatever!
Comments
(I’m guessing Kirk is a common one though)
The currency isn’t well regarded either, as Ballymoney shows (yes I know it’s not a person).
Lincolnshire has many place names of this kind, such as Norton Disney (I believe there is some connection to Walt), and Boothby Graffoe is a village in addition to a standup comedian.
My father used to tell me this one:
"If Ballyrobert hadn't been so Ballymena bout his Ballymoney
He could have had a Ballycastle for his Ballyhome..."
So far, only @Heavenlyannie has risen to the challenge (though I like @GH's inversion)!
If not, I am surprised that Heavenlyannie hasn't offered Wendy, a hamlet in Cambridgeshire, a few miles from the town of Royston - which is also a given name.
Something that didn't actually strike me until I left Ireland.
AFF
We found plenty of oddly named hamlets, villages & towns, some of which fit the bill for this thread - the nearest being Saffron Walden and Margaret Roding
(I don't think it does; I think the "ing" bit just means a village or settlement).
Re: the OP, there was quite a celebrated road sign which read:
To Old Bolingbroke and Mavis Enderby
to which someone had added:
the gift of a son
The town of Paul Smiths was the last place in the United States to convert from crank phones, where you turned the crank to get the operator, to dial phones. This happened as late as 1970, I believe.
Perry Green
Shaw Green
Skye Green
and their French cousin, Gaston Green
Perry Barr
Perry Beeches
and Perry Common
Perry Barr, of course, famously features in a popular carol -
'We three kings of Orient are, one in a taxi, one in a car.
One on a scooter, bipping his hooter,
Going to Perry Barr'
And of course there is the famous Welsh lounge singer Tonypandy
Of course the real problem is that many places are named after people. And many surnames are taken from places. So yes, there is liable to be a crossover.
Interestingly, Ashby-de-la-Zouch used to be just Ashby, but was renamed by someone who build his big house there called Lord de-la-Zouch.
These Normans, coming over here, renaming out towns....
The spelling of Rhydding strikes me as a bit like people called Smythe who everyone knows were until recently Smiths, or for that matter Hyacynth Bucket, pronounced Bouquet.
I know this doesn't quite fit @March Hare and @Heavenlyannie 's test. In Wells in Somerset (the one which shares a bishop with a Bath), there is a signpost 'To the Horringtons". It points to three villages, East, West and South. I can never resist saying, 'We've been invited to drinks with the Horringtons'. I can even imagine them. He's a retired senior naval officer and she's short, brisk, energetic and a churchwarden.
Of others, how about Norton Fitzwarren - I think he's a BBC producer - Stanton Drew - a fictional detective - and Clyffe Pypard - a matinée idol from the 1930s who hung on in repertory well into the 1950s.
The Horringtons could well be background characters in something by Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers. Or they might even know Colonel Mustard slightly.
All good, and I like this sub-thread of envisaging characters appropriate to the names.
Ah yes, 'Fifty Shades of Hemingford Grey'.
Not to be confused with unsuccessful petty criminal, Dumbie Dykes (he keeps getting caught).