Weird English Town Names
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It was really fun looking into weird town names in England, I would love to look at some other places and their weird town names. Feel free to suggest other places, but of course any subject area can be covered in these Monday videos :)
England is weird
Video idea: instruments name origins
There is a place in Norfolk called Little Snoring close-by to Great snoring.
My family live in Norfolk and i once got lost in Great Snoring because i took a wrong turn 😂
Patrick plz do 5 planets’ names explained (E.g Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Venus & Uranus) for next week.
@@Caitlin7142 my mums side of the family live in Norfolk
doomi4055 those planets and all the other planets in our system mercury-pluto excluding Earth and planet 9 are named after roman gods even the dwarf planets are named after these gods
Mercury= named after the the god of commerce, travel and thievery
Venus= named after the goddess of love and beauty
Earth= not named after a god
Mars= named after the god of war
Jupiter= named after the king of the gods
Saturn= named after the god of agriculture
Uranus= named after the god of the sky
Neptune= named after the god of the sea
Pluto= named after the god of the underworld
There indeed is a place in Norfolk called Little Snoring! Ironically it has a larger population than Great Snoring.
and an airfield.
True enough, I used to live in a village called ‘Trunch’ , also in Norfolk may I might add.
Do towns outside of the UK count? Here's a list of Brazilian towns with silly names:
- Anta Gorda (Fat Tapir)
- Venha-Ver (Come-See)
- Não-Me-Toque (Do-Not-Touch-Me)
- Passa e Fica (Pass and Stay)
- Varre-Sai (Sweep-Leave)
- Mata Pais (Parent Wood or Kill Parents/Fathers, depending on how you read it)
Just mentioning a few examples...
How did i never hear about these? How many of them share the same state?
@@droidB1each of those is from a different state if I remember correctly.
Chipping Sodbury
The most British place name possible
It sounds almost like an old-timey expletive as well.
@@tjenadonn6158 “Oi! Ya chippin’ sodbury!”
My hometown had a mayor named Throop. He had previously run for mayor of Chicago as a Prohibitionist. He later founded Caltech.
Towcester. Pronounced toaster.
I spilt Worcestershire sauce on my Towcester.
That spelling gives much more sens.
At least that's actually a town. All the '-cester' examples Patrick gave are cities!
I live next to Throop Pennsylvania pronounced TROOP. You can always tell who is not local to the area by the way they pronounce it
An interesting topic for me, since I'm danish, would be the difference in spelling of some Danish towns and cities. Like for example, the cities of ''Aalborg'' and ''Aarhus'', are often spelled with two a's, but sometimes, and depending on which part of Denmark you're from, some people will spell them like ''Ålborg'' and ''Århus''.
In Danish, the 'Å' is the same pronunciation as 'aa', only 'aa' is the old and now outdated way of spelling it, since the letter 'Å', was created, among other things, to get rid of double a's.
If I remember correctly, I believe that at some point, the government issued a sort-of offer to towns to change their spellings to replace double a's with 'å'. I believe this was done to make it easier to read road-signs.
Some cities willingly changed their names from the old spellings with double a's, however some decided to keep them. And since then, those towns and cities have been hitting home their decisions to stick with the old spellings, for tradition's sake. In fact, two of Denmark's 5 largest cities, Aarhus and Aalborg (2nd, and 4th largest, respectfully), have been sort-of pseudo ''protesting'' the placement of road-signs that spell the city-names with 'å', instead of the cities' own, traditional spellings.
Cheers!
Nordic countries making things unnecessarily difficult.
In Sweden Å is pronounced as "O".
And Jylland and Jaelland for the main bit of Denmark. And Kolding almost sounds (but not looks) British.
@@robertwilloughby8050 Never heard over Jaelland.
They're probably talking about Sjælland/Zealand.
Fun fact about New Zealand: NOT named after the danish island Zealand, but the
dutch/holland/netherlands province Zeeland. This was probably covered on this channel at some point.
@@lakrids-pibe Yeah I know
Thorp is most likely a direct loan word from Old Norse. It's exactly the same word.
In Finnish we have the word "torppa" that pretty exclusively means a house (as in someone's home), and that's a loan word from swedish.
Throop/thorp could also just be a west-Germanic word like the German word Dorf or Dutch word Dorp
It probably came to the nordic countries from the south as Dorf. Southern Jutland seems to have the oldest places with -torp names.
I'm guessing the vikings brought it to britain, but I'm curious if the earlier anglo saxons also founded villages with dorp names, and can you tell de difference in the english names?
* Grew up in Worster, does that count. Our local chant was:
We're from Worcester, (repeat by crowd)
mighty, mighty Worcester. (repeat by crowd)
Everywhere we go (repeat by crowd)
People always ask us (repeat by crowd)
Where you come from? (repeat by crowd)
Where you goin' to? (repeat by crowd)
And we always tell them (repeat by crowd)
We're from Worcester, (repeat by crowd)
The chant is is then repeated until either the chant leader or the crowd gets bored.
I was glad to see Worcester on your list, as I love close to Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. We spell and pronounce it the same as the English town, so the name survived in its original form here (along with nearby Gloucester).
We also have a Gloucester in Virginia, spelled and pronounced as the British do. (But then we also have a city called Buena Vista, which is bewilderingly pronounced "byoonuh vistuh", so we deserve no points for authenticity.)
Another town that is spelt differently to how its pronounced is Keighley, near Leeds and Bradford. It is pronounced ''Keithley'' or ''Keethlee''. But it's written as though it should be ''Keeley"! The name actually means "Cyhha's farm or clearing".
Unless you're from Essex, then it's Keeflee
I wonder if anyone in Keighley ever called their daughter Keighley just to confuse?!🤣
There's a town in Croatia called "Ludbreg" and when it's translated into English the name is "Crazy hill"
Nice to see this idea taken forward
We have a Worcester, Massachusetts (where I have family) so I've always known how to pronounce it.
I feel like anybody who lives in MA oughta know how to pronounce it. I'm out in Berkshire and I've never heard anybody from here say War-kester.
@@lackedpuppet9022Pretty much everyone in New England knows.
There is also a Worcester in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Most people pronounce the "w" in the Afrikaans/Dutch/German way ("v" in English).
I hope someone in either Westward Ho!, UK or Saint-Louis-Du-Ha! Ha!, QUE, CAN sees this and convinces their local government to reach out to the other to have one of those "sister city" partnerships. The uniqueness of having punctuation included in the legal name is enough to connect these two small towns.
*Wales enter the chat
🐳🐋🐳🐋🐳🐋
Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
Ah yes, wyyywywwwwywy (one word)
Those get a pass since they're not in English (but Welsh, I presume)
@@duckpotat9818 brb, going to wyyywywlllanfairppylllywwy
There is a Worcester-sauce. And my mother always pronounced it like Wor-chester.
Just for fun I like to throw in a few extra syllables. Wor-chester-shooster-scheister sauce. It's very nice on broiled hippupontopodeomnibus. 🦛
You're thinking of WorcesterSHIRE sauce, with a "shire" at the end, pronounced WORR-stuh-sherr.
@@KingsleyIII
That is very possible.
My favourite mangling of Worcestershire is in Knight-mare Hare (1955) presumably by Mel Blanc.
When I was studying Latin in high school (in the U.S.), I was taught that English place names ending in -caster, -cester, or -chester were all originally Roman camps (Latin "castra"). I'm wondering if you know that but didn't mention it for some reason, or you didn't know it, or maybe you knew that it was a folk etymology or some other kind of mythical falsehood.
There is a village in Suffolk called Diss
It has a railway. I suppose you could call that the Diss track.
Just down da road from Dat.
New town, who Diss?
Technically Diss is in Norfolk but it’s easy to make that mistake because it is very close to the border
Cholmondeley! Then there's the society to promote that English cathedral town, the Worcester Borcester Club.
You now will hear throop for all of eternity
Hello from Denmark.
We have many places with names ending in *-torp* and derived forms *-rup, -strup, -trup, -drup.*
It also occurs alone as in *Torp, Torup, Torpe, Tarp, Tarup* and *Terp.*
How about East Anglian place names: These might be interesting:
Happisburgh
Diss
Covehithe
Campsey Ashe
Iken
Sea Palling
Wangford
Americans joke about the pronunciation of Worcester, but in reality we know how to pronounce it.
Watching from my college town of Worcester, MA! Surprised your example of a Canadian town with an exclamation mark wasn't Alert!, considered to be one of the northernmost towns in the world.
I worked with a man from Portsmouth whose middle name is Trenfield. Evidently a tradition in his family to pass that name on to the oldest son. His father told him it came from an old village of the same name, but we cannot find any mention of it. Do you know of anything similar that might explain its origin?
Greatly appreciate your explanations.Thanks very much.
ThankYou 4Sharing!!!❤🎉 MuchLove!!!❤🎉
We have a Throop in Pennsylvania as well. It's a borough on the outskirts of Scranton.
I like your new glasses! I've just got new ones myself.
My great great great grandmother was from a town in Leicestershire called Applby Magna.
little snoring is a place! in fact i drove through it last week in Norfolk, i believe it's near Fakenham
Hand and Pen, Exeter, Indian Queens, Cornwall
I would guess named after inns.
Clippings Green, Norwich (Pronounced "Norrich")
Sand Hole, York
There are hundreds!
5 Dutch places called "Bergen" ("Mountains") explained, because The Netherlands doesn't have any mountains (except the Vaalserberg), so why do we have:
- Bergen, Limburg;
- Bergen, Noord-Holland;
- Bergen op Zoom, Noord-Brabant ("Mountains on Swamp" or "Mountains on Harbor");
- Driebergen, Utrecht ("Three mountains");
- Geertruidenberg, Noord-Brabant ("Geertruid's mountain");
- Hillersberg, Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland ("Hiller's mountain");
- Muiderberg, Noord-Holland ("Mountain of Muiden");
- Steenbergen, Noord-Brabant ("Stone mountains");
- Zevenbergen, Noord-Brabant ("Seven mountains");
- and 63 others?
I grew up near Worcester, New York, which is pronounced the same as in England. There is a much larger one, as well as a Gloucester, in Massachusetts.
It's not mysterious at all. The E sits between identical sounds, C and S, and, like many an English E, has become silent. So it went from Woo-cess-ter to Wooss-ster.
But that was both silly and tiring, so the two S-sounds telescoped into one.
BTW, a couple of relatives attended Wooster College in Ohio. So, yes, Ohioans might have trouble in Worcestershire. Oh, wait... We pronounce the sauce the same as in English.
In Norfolk there is a village about 10 miles/16km south west of Norwich called Wymondham which is pronounced as Windham. Norwich itself is not exactly pronounced phonetically its pronunciation is closer to 'Norridge' [rhymes with 'porridge']. Likewise the town of Greenwich, 8 miles/14km east of Central London is pronounced as 'Grennich'.
There is a Little Snoring, near Great Snoring, the pub there is called the Green Man, so you can go to the Little Snoring Green Man]
It doesn’t even have to have an actual naughty word in it. Tom Scott has an amusing video about it.
I just came back from London & while touring around we visited a town called "Slough." We had no idea how to say it until a local told us that it rhymes with "cow." 😆
Those are indeed interesting names. There apparently is also a Little Snoring. Oddly, Wikipedia says it is bigger than Great Snoring.
Look into the different pronunciations of the places called _Houghton_ .
I thought that place names containing -cester, -caster, or -chester meant a Roman camp. Your explanation of the origin of Worcester did not mention that, and I was just wondering why.
I'm gonna name a town HO! HO! HO!
Theres a Worcester in South Africa's Western Cape as well.
There’s a Worcester, Gloucester, and Leicester in my home state of Massachusetts! And it’s pronounced like the British.
Hello from Saskatchewan, Canada! You'd have fun with all the Cree, Ojibwe, Blackfoot, etc names up here.
I always thought Worcester was pronounced "Worchester" or and Leicester was pronounced "Lie-chester". (I'm Dutch)
There's some weird town names here in Chile too, some examples are:
Peor es Nada (Nothing would be worse)
Quitacalzón (No underwear)
Entrepiernas (Between legs)
Salsipuedes (Get out if you can)
Spanish is my second language, but Chilean Spanish is way too much for me to know/learn. I am certain that the only reason I understand these names is because they're written
As much as I want to absorb this new information I don’t think my American brain will ever abandon “wer-ches-ter-shy-er” sauce.
TIP to RUclipsrs: Don't use the word "Demonetized" If I was writing an aggressive Automated AI to hunt down questionable videos to stop ad revenue on and harm creators, I would start with low hanging Fruit, if an RUclipsr Says words like "Demonetized" then there might be a self-aware reason and I would have AI automatically disable ads - low hanging fruit. If a video has no reason to fear it why use the word after all.
Another possible guess for why it's Great Snoring when there isn't a smaller one: maybe there were two Snorings (maybe named after directions like North and South Snoring, or altitude like Upper and Lower Snowing) and they grew together and combined?
There is though. Indeed Little Snoring is the one I'd heard of before, not Great Snoring.
Theres a town called Throop in Pennsylvania near where I live, idk if its named after that Throop, but here sadly we pronounce it " Troop" lol
I recall in my home borough of Brooklyn in NYC there's a Throop Avenue. Only place I've ever come across the name
Penistone and Scunthorpe!
Shitterton
Twatt in the shetlands
Bitchfield
RUclips offers to translate this to English
@@wum4541That one isn’t an coincidence; it comes from the fact that it used to have an open sewer
Thorp, Iike zis🇩🇪, sound like a cognate to the German Dorf.
Video idea: punctuation marks: full stop/period (why not just dot?). Why is it a semi-colon (half-intestine XD) instead of e.g. a "big comma". Where did the *asterisk come from?
Born and raised in Worcester Massachusetts. Most people, even from mass pronounce it WARCHESTER
Omg I've never seen your face before
THere are places in teh US that aren't pronounced the way they're spelled either! Two in my home state of NC come to mind - Rutherfordton (Pronounced RUFF-ton) and Cherryville (pronounced SHER-vill).
do something on all-places-with-hypens-in-names
There is a little snoring near gt snoring
I love Arsefacey, best place
Did you know where is the source of that map in the beginning of the video? I wanted to have that for myself
I know a place called Skares.
As a Canadian I'm obliged to tell you Patrick, the town is pronounced "San Louie du Haha!" It's not much of a place but it's definitely a fun name. That being said, nowhere near the most bizzare cities and towns in our country. Those would almost exclusively be found on the island of Newfoundland
As A Newfoundlander I can confirm that. Joe Batt's Arm and Leading Tickles spring to mind, as do Heart's Content, Heart"s Delight and Heart's Desire, all close to the notorious town of Dildo! And what about the village of Quida Vida, which is pronounced Kiddy Viddy? I could go on, but I'll leave it to you to discover some of the others.
@@astiwine2354 Don't forget the scenic vistas of Conception Bay😂😂
SAINT LOUIS DU HA HA HA. VERY FUNNY.
when in university we discussed about how Murdoch rose to power as a mogul during the 80's I found the name of the London area of Wopping to be really funny
Althorp, the home of the Spencer family, is pronounced Althrop for some reason.
Worcestershire sauce!😂
There's a town in Utah, USA whose name is spelled Hurricane, but it's pronounced Huracan.
Let’s not even mention Tooele
@@martychisnall Town in Wisconsin called Wausakee, most people not from there spell it like the last part of Kawasaki
@@martychisnall then there's Passamaquoddy, PA
Possibly settled by folk from the West Virginia town of Hurricane (Huruhcun)
@@ohppig1 You may be right about that.
You left out two better examples -…Smodland in Kent, better known for being the home of the late great Reggae/Ska singer in Judge Dread aka Alexander Minto. Also Bicester which is pronounced Biss-tet rather than Bii-cester. Also why was Scotland left out. There is a famous example. Alves in the NE of Scotland is pronounced Al-ves rather than Alves.
Worcester kind of sounds like someone mispronouncing "rooster"
In America, we pronounce Throop like “Troop”.
the 5 great lakes
I'm in Worcester.
The best way of spelling the pronunciation is "Wuster", rhyming with duster (Your video says "Wooster" and that's not right because that rhymes with rooster, and is wrong).
Flitwick... the 'w' is silent
Not sure why Patrick doesn't think stupid American RUclips won't demonitise him saying Westward Ho a lot of times.
"blubber" is also a Dutch word meaning "mud". Maybe the "blubberhouses" were built by a Dutchman out of mud? Cheers
Why is there ticking?
Umm SOME Americans can pronounce Worcester and Gloucester... especially in MASSACHUSETTS,where we have BOTH towns. Matter of Fact H. John Benjamin & Sam Seder are from Worcester.
I'm kind of surprise you didn't include Frome. Not pronounced the way it's spelled.
I kept hearing “Froop”, is that how you say it!?
As a foreigner, I'll pronounce 'cester' phonetically till the day I die.
I prefer logic over tradition.
Gotta love the ❗ town
Hello from babacombe
So no Penistone?
So it's Gloucester, Worcester, Leicester, but Cirencester? Make it make sense.
It all sounds like playgrounds for rabbits in overalls to my American ass.
Dickson 😂😂😂
Surprised by how few of these are from Yorkshire, the home of Giggleswick, Land of Nod, Booze, Fryup, Dorking, and Thornton-le-Beans.
I'd be amused to see you cover five Welsh place names, considering your comment about being bad at pronouncing things. The spelling is unusually regular, at least, so you just need to work out the orthography and how to get your mouth to produce the iconic ll sound.
Why isn't Cirencester pronounced "Cirrenster"?
So why is it pronounced Dorchester, and Gloster and Wooster?
It's not pronounced °Wooster", as you say. That rhymes with 'rooster' and it's wrong.
It's pronounced "Wuster", rhyming with 'duster'.
@@the-scamp Hey, thanks for the clarification! American here, so yeah... but have fun with, say, old Cherokee or Navajo names for places.
@@drrocketman7794 greetings to you from Worcester, England; have a great day!
@the-scamp You too! And today I finally learned the correct pronunciation of Worcestershire sauce!
Lol 😆
Hey. Ho!
You should be afraid of us for your way of saying z.
throop?? you mean Throop (troop), Pennsylvania.
youse are pronouncing wrong.