Literal translations of North American place names make continent sound like Middle Earth

boing
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I had no idea.

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I come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.

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A sad corollary is the reason so many places are named Springfield. Disease spread rapidly in North America, wiping out many villages long before settlers got there. Much of NA was forested, but from time to time settlers would come across a great place to put down roots. A flat area near water that was clear of trees. A spring in a field. Springfield. These were the long abandoned villages. Spots carefully chosen and prepared by people long gone.

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Yeah, that seemed to be their thinking. It’s wrong, of course, but that does seem to have been their process


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You have no idea - doesn’t make it wrong.

What does “British” mean? it means “of the Britons”. What is the etymology of “Briton”? It comes from Celtic “Britto” - tattooed person.

What does “Columbia” mean? “Land of Columbus” - what does “Columbus” mean? It’s Latin for “dove”.

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I always thought that Wisconsin translated into “Land of Cheese and Beer.”

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Some of these sound a little dubious. I grew up in The Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of the PorciĂșncula River, not sure how that got turned into “The Messengers.”

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As far as I can tell, the name of my city is its etymology - Saskatoon is named for the Saskatoon, a fruit that grows there, which comes from the Cree misñskwatîmina, which means exactly the same fruit, and whose etymology in Cree I haven’t been able to find further explored.

So, no mysterious clever-soundingness to be had there.

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Angel comes from Greek angelos - messenger.

Really, they’re just tracing the etymology back as far as they can.

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It doesn’t even have to be a translation
 english traditional names for geographic features result in hilarity enough.

Here in Kentucky, there are dozens of areas ending in “lick”. I guess it’s a reference to natural salt outcroppings - “salt licks”.

It does get pretty racy though. We have both a “Beaver Lick, KY” and a “Big Bone Lick, KY” so at least that’s one area of Kentucky life without discrimination.

Living along the Licking River gets even more bizarre
 a few block from me is, no kidding, the “Girl Scout Licking Memorial Bridge.” I think they stopped replacing the plaques after they got stolen one too many times.

Edit - It’s actually called the Licking Valley Girl Scout Bridge. That’s much less suggestive.

http://enquirer.com/editions/2001/12/08/loc_girl_scouts_get.html

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As long as the people from the states of Flowery and Red and Dry don’t go insisting that everybody speak English Only, I’m fine with it.

In general, in names we got from the English, -ham or -wick is a village, -ton is a town, -shire is a county.

One of Stephen Brust’s books has the protagonists passing through the area of the Bengloarafurd Bridge, and explains the etymology of several different sets of settlers or conquerors all naming the place “previous-name ford” in their languages.

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The etymology they’ve chosen for Oregon is far from widely accepted. With no greater certainty, they could have chosen to call the state “Land of Red River Land River,” “Land of the Western River,” “Land of Fish Grease,” or “Land of Big-Eared People.” I suspect the same goes for many of the names chosen here. Mexico, for instance, is more likely “Land of the War God.”

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Love the world map, too. I imagine very few people picked a fight with Land of the Really Strong Ones.

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Calling Nome, AK Name is not even close to correct. In the Local Inuit Dilect the term for “where?” is Nami? Wich means “Where?”

The wikipedia article is the bounds of urban legends, when people who researched the name ignored to check the local inupiaq dialect, wich is more likely to be the source of the title of Nome

Here is the Inupiaq living dictionary proof,

Its not the same as the local Kawarek dialect where there is slight deviation to the pronounciation and meaning, but it just means “where?” or “i dont know where?” In recent usage.

http://www.livingdictionary.com/term/viewTerm.jsp?term=49171614535

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All in all it’s a nice idea, but I can’t shake the feeling they tweaked the results a bit so that the ‘translations’ would be Middle-Earth-ish enough.

It also makes me wonder how many linguists[1] are reaching for theit meds right now.

[1] Never, ever call them linguinies, they really hate that.

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I agree. Like @ben_waterhouse said, there are some cases where the makers of this map seem to have picked a favorite from a list of possible translations. It’s still a neat thing though.

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(Old) York’s Roman name is Eboracum, which is thought to be from a Celtic word meaning Place of the Yew Trees.

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