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 names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given, to assure that happiness [of saving the Union], and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith forever.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.”
—Yi-Fu Tuan (b. 1930)
“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)