Names of Landscape Features
The names of natural or man-made features in the landscape tend to be older than those of settlements since the former are often more widely known. Names are given to water features, hills and valleys, islands and marshes, as well as woods and districts. Man-made landscape features that have been given names include roads and trackways as well as burial mounds, etc. Many topographic elements become incorporated into settlement names, together with plant, creature names or personal names. Many topographical words convey not just an image of the place but also a wealth of information about the likely size, status and pattern of farming practised by the community living there.
Water was of major importance to the early settlers of an area, both for subsistence and for religious reasons. Names were given to springs, streams, rivers and lakes as well as marshes, bays and seas. Eilert Ekwall carried out an early study of river names in England while Krahe conducted a European-wide examination of river names which showed that there were common roots in the names over a wide area. There is still controversy over the language of these roots. Sometimes a generic word was adopted as a specific label, for example the Celtic word for river was afon which is used in many cases as the name (Avon) of rivers in England.
Land characteristics were important to both hunters and farmers, and there are many terms relating to different types of hills and valleys. Some terms, like cumb and penn, were adopted from Celtic by Anglo-Saxons. Other terms relate to the expansion of farming.
Topographical names were held in low esteem by early place name scholars but their importance was raised in a book by Margaret Gelling, first published in 1978. This discusses the many elements of topographical place names, with updates in 1988 and 1997.
Read more about this topic: Place Name Origins
Famous quotes containing the words names of, names, landscape and/or features:
“The world is never the same as it was.... And that’s as it should be. Every generation has the obligation to make the preceding generation irrelevant. It happens in little ways: no longer knowing the names of bands or even recognizing their sounds of music; no longer implicitly understanding life’s rules: wearing plaid Bermuda shorts to the grocery and not giving it another thought.”
—Jim Shahin (20th century)
“Being the dependents of the general government, and looking to its treasury as the source of all their emoluments, the state officers, under whatever names they might pass and by whatever forms their duties might be prescribed, would in effect be the mere stipendiaries and instruments of the central power.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet light, in which the woods and fences checkered and partitioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a fit drapery to hang over fairyland. The world seemed decked for some holiday or prouder pageantry ... like a green lane into a country maze, at the season when fruit-trees are in blossom.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)