How Lord "Snowdon" got his name and is this explanation easily understandable to hoi polloi?

I’m American, and I know it because I’ve been there a few times. I used to live in Lancaster (the one in Lancashire, not the one in Pennsylvania); Snowdonia, like the Lake District, isn’t very far away by train or car if you want a weekend trip to the mountains.

Visit Snowdonia sometime if you get a chance. It’s lovely when it’s not pouring rain (and if it* is *pouring rain, there are old slate mines that give tours).

Crossharbour is a neighbourhood on the Isle of Dogs in the East End of London. (It was in the heart of the old docks and I’d presume that the name derived from the fact that the harbour basin there ran across most of the width of the peninsula.) Conrad Black’s connection with the area was that he owned the Daily Telegraph at the time and its main printing works - but not its editorial offices - were located there.
However, this always was seen as a bit of an odd choice, especially since, even to the locals, “Crossharbour” was mainly just one more station on the local light urban rail system. It smacked of calling himself after a Tube station.

On the other hand, “Carnarvon” in Carnarvonshire would be pretty distinctly Welsh-sounding to a Brit, as much as most Americans would know that something like “San Antonio” was a Spanish name and guess that it was in the southwest somewhere. So I think, at least, most Brits would be able to say from that newspaper quote 'he was named after that famous mountain in Wales because his family was from somewhere in Wales".

Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven

OK, I’ll bite: Kesteven is a place, not a battle, which might include the site of some colossal industrial union de-nationalization demonstrations.

Right?

Wrong. It’s where she grew up.

You mean right. A “site of some colossal industrial union de-nationalization demonstration” was an example of a battle, obviously a great victory a la a la main.

Sorry, that’s a little too elliptical for me, Leo. I’m not used to someone who communicates solely by allusion and metaphor.

:slight_smile:

That page is not correct. Kesteven wasn’t part of her title. She was just Baroness Thatcher. If she’d been Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, it would have been gazetted “BARONESS THATCHER OF KESTEVEN, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.” I think the order of service for her funeral got it wrong too.

Although he did become Lord Armstrong-Jones later on. All peers who were the initial holders of hereditary peerages were offered life peerages. He accepted, and was given a life barony in the name of Armstrong-Jones.

She left the House of Commons in 1992, and was appointed a life peerage in the House of Lords in the same year, receiving the title of Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven.

From an official UK government website.

That’s literally the same page. And it’s still just as wrong. (My cite was the official legal notice of the creation of her peerage. I’m going to believe it over the online equivalent of a tourist pamphlet.)

Another factor in giving out titles within the royal family is the semi-political function of ensuring some sort of symbolic connections to or acknowledgenents of different parts of the UK (as also happens with coin designs, for instance). So Charles, as well as being Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall (as is customary for the heir) has a bunch of titles relating to Scotland as well; his father, brothers and the sons of his royal great-uncles (and their heirs) also have “courtesy” titles attaching to places elsewhere than the one they’re best known by, all across the country between them. Doesn’t come with any lands, it’s just a symbolic thing.

Snowdon is in Carnarvon. Linley couldn’t call himself Carnarvon because there is already an Eal of Carnarvon, quite a famous one in fact.

Not only does the current Earl still live at Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey of the TV series) but the 5th Earl and Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

Shaka, when the walls fell.

This American only knew about Snowdonia because he was once a 13-year-old Led Zeppelin fan (like many), and that was a favorite region of theirs to inspire and record folksy acoustic music (notably the album LZ III).

Or Earl Mountbatten of Burma: Lord Mountbatten - Wikipedia

LOL I was about to post something along those lines, it was the first thing that came to mind. We have some real nerds on these boards. :stuck_out_tongue: