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booksandmints t1_ir9fo0v wrote

Reply to comment by GronakHD in Where did the English language REALLY come from? by MagicRaptor

Yes, I find it fascinating! The names of places in the UK is also very interesting when you start picking them apart. There are a lot of places near where I currently live that date from the Anglo-Saxon period. It ties into the whole language thing quite nicely and just adds to the richness of the landscape for me. I’m sure the same is true of the rest of the world too, and I’d love to hear those stories, but I see these place names every day so they’re more in my mind.

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GronakHD t1_ir9fw87 wrote

I’m in Scotland so we have a lot of original brittonic/celtic names. Load of places called DunSomehting, Dundee, Dunbar, Dumbarton, dun means forified hill. Dumbarton means fortified hill of the brittons. Also Aber is common, like Aberdeen, but even in Wales you can find places called AberSomething. Then theres the buroughs/burgh, loads of places called burg or berg in germany/scandinavia. Really fascinating!

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booksandmints t1_ir9jrb1 wrote

I can definitely vouch for the Welsh names, because I grew up there. In Wales Aber means the mouth of, as in, the mouth of a river. So Abertawe (Swansea) means the mouth of the river Tawe.

I lived in Scotland for a while and never made the Dun connection, but that makes so much sense now you’ve said it!

I find all this stuff really interesting. I did a degree in history and I’ve got lots of books on words and the history of words, sayings, and place names. Fascinating!

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redneckhotmess t1_ir9sed0 wrote

You should see it here in the states, where we just stole our town names from other countries! We have London's, Sidney, Russia, Kensongton, Aberdeen, Kenmare; there are bergs and burgs and boros galore. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to steal any of the classy sounding names like Strafford-on-Avon . and I have no clue how we ended up with a city called Intercourse 🤣

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PA_Golden_Dino t1_ira8d9t wrote

Because Blue Ball and Bird-In-Hand, PA (neighboring towns) were lonely. Please keep in mind that once you go through Intercourse, you end up in Paradise, PA.

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Uptown_NOLA t1_ir9u9u6 wrote

I've always had a theory that the settlers. while very hard working, kind of ran out of names by the time they got to the Mississippi river and just started repeating everything.

In Texas they have Palestine, which is named after Palestine, Illinois, not the original place. lol

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Wintersbone7 t1_irgvgmh wrote

After the 13 original colonies, th new states were named either by the Spanish or after local indigenous populations who then quickly displaced

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Uptown_NOLA t1_iri99rm wrote

I was speaking more to names of municipalities which a lot of seem to simply get repeated in state after state.

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primalbluewolf t1_ir9n7e8 wrote

>dun means forified hill

I knew there was some use to be had out of reading Katherine Kerr!

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