Origin of The Word 'Orme'
Both the Great and Little Ormes have been etymologised to the Old Norse word for sea serpent (transliterated to urm or orm - the English word worm having the same origin). Marauding Vikings are thus said to have believed that the Ormes (and the wider Creuddyn peninsula) resembled a sea serpent - with the Great Orme being the serpent's head - as their boats came in. But it is very difficult to substantiate this belief because the Vikings left us no written texts, and although they certainly raided the area they do not appear to have colonised it. There are other Norse names in the kingdom of Gwynedd (such as Point of Ayr), but etymology is an imprecise tool.
Until the coming of tourism in the 19th century (and the first tourists and developers came by sea), the name used for the wider peninsula as a whole was usually Creuddyn (the name of the medieval cwmwd in the area) but Y Gogarth or Pen y Gogarth for the Orme itself, and the name Orme appears to have been used for the headland as seen from the sea. This is the case in the "Plan of the Bay & Harbour of Conway in Caernarvon Shire" by Lewis Morris and published in 1748, which map boldly shows the name "CREUDDYN" in the body of the peninsula and applies the name "Orme's Head" beyond the Great Orme headland at its north-westerly seaward point.
Read more about this topic: Great Orme
Famous quotes containing the words origin of the, origin of, origin and/or word:
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)