Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 17:20:50 -0800

I just happen to have a few (THUD) weighty placename tomes at hand ...

First, brief editorial statement. Placenames are like personal names in that they were originally meant for grubby, hands on, everyday common use. Sometimes they could be witty but in a very bucolic and obvious way. Not high flown, poetic, or delicately metaphorical, concocted by the highly educated. No matter how wispy and dreamlike they now sound, how evocative of faraway romance and dreams of yesterday, they originally meant things like 'dwelling place of the swineherd'. Did I say THUD?

So, our job is to make up placenames in the way that _they_ named places. For common, ordinary, real life features. If they just happen to sound really keen, well, that's our privilege. End of lecture, you may pay as you leave.

The following are a few random contributions--(OE=Old English, ON=Old Norse, OSw=Old Swedish)

'Head' (OE 'heafod') can mean variously 'headland, summit, upper end, source of a stream, promontory, hill'. 'Gate' in a placename can mean either gate, or a road (from ON, OSw 'gata'). If you like the idea of a fortified place, instead of keep you might try OE 'Chester,Ceaster, Cestre' from Latin 'castra', or fort. 'Oke', 'Oken', 'Oak', and 'Ock' may all signify 'oak' in placenames (there are doubtless more).

(All the above examples are taken from the Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names by Eilert Ekwall).

I like 'Oakenhead' myself (note the one-word formation). It's a good period form, it's not an actual place name that I have so far found, and the possibilities for humor are there. There's always 'Oakbottom' too, for that matter (a perfectly unexceptionable place name, it means 'oak valley'.)

'Ramchester' might be a little less intrusive than Sheep Keep. Also, though you don't have to tell anybody, the word 'ram' can also derived from the word meaning mean 'wild garlic' in OE.

More will probably occur to me, but this is what I've come up with so far. I look forward to seeing more ideas.

Elisabeth AEstel