Another Scottish oddity may hold some interest for the forum. I assume Cecil is correct that Mount Ben Lomond in Utah is the mountain in the Paramount movies logo , but it’s proper name is Ben Lomond mountain. That mountain is named after a Scottish mountain called Ben Lomond, which is next to the more famous lake, Loch Lomond. ‘Ben Lomond’ isn’t a person, ‘Ben’ means mountain in Scotland as Loch means lake. So Mount Ben Lomond is a redundancy meaning Mount Mount Lomond. It’s the equivalent of calling a body of water ‘Lake Loch Lomond’. This duplication of place names due to lingual misunderstanding is extremely common throughout the world.
Curious, I just searched some pics of the Paramount logo, and Ben Lomond, and I gotta say: Whaaa?! It doesn’t even seem to come close. At all… How could anyone living in full view of that mountain possible try to claim it’s the Paramount mountain?
Thanks Rico!
I only recently discovered Straight Dope and have been excitedly working my way back through the archive. I added this to my response on kilts as I wasn’t sure it deserved it’s own thread, apologies for posting in haste .
The term for redundancies in place names that eluded me last night is tautological. Scottish examples of tautological place names are the Ochil Hills, meaning the Hill Hills; Knockhill, meaning Hill-Hill; Eas Fors Waterfall meaning Waterfall-Waterfall-Waterfall. Another example using the word Lomond is Loch Lomond Lake in Canada, meaning Lake Beacon Lake. And Loch Loch doesn’t even pretend to be anything but tautological, and was probably named by someone who named their dog ‘dog’. There is even a tautological nation state now, East Timor (East–East), but the largest tautological place name I know of is the Milkyway Galaxy (Milky Way milky way).
I wouldn’t get too worked up over redundant tautologies when proper names get borrowed by foreign languages. It doesn’t really matter what the words meant in the old language, they’re just sounds in the new language.
Of course, there will always be personal exceptions, like when people put an “s” on the end of Sierra Nevada (or worse, add “Mountains”). It will always bug me.
Aye! I thought I’d first chip in with what I know best, although my criticism of the kilt has annoyed some other Scots. Why do you ask? If you are ever here I do free guided tours, but I tend to invent everything I’m saying, such as “Edinburgh Castle was originally built in Norway but was transported here stone by stone as a wedding dowry with Queen Margaret in the 13th century”.
lol, dinnae wirrae mon, (I’ll stop doing that now being essentially a sassenach myself) - to be honest I misread what you were saying and thought you were talking about “mount ben nevis”, which is obviously complete crap… having read things more properly do please carry on
A substantial part of my heritage is Scottish and I retain property there which, everything be told, I feel a lot more comfortable in than down here in London (even if it’s just cause of the comforting sight of Jackie Bird on TV).
Hopefully there’ll be a doper meeting up north soon we can both get to…
I just noticed this…there are doper meetings? What a lovely forum. Is there a tradition or format to doper meetings - like do we meet in a pub or a library? I bet any doper meeting would make the ultimate pub quiz team.
Aye, or the ‘Great River’, Mississippi! I can understand when languages mix or die to produce tautlogical place names, but I despair over whoever named Loch Loch, or Loch Lochy, they obviously never travelled far enough to feel the need for a unique identifier for their Loch. Scotlands lochs aren’t even uniquely named, there are duplicates of some names at extreme geographical parts of the country, which makes giving directions to tourists difficult.
I don’t know if this happens outside of Europe, but all of the UK, not just Scotland, has towns and geographical features whose names are written completely differently from the way that they are spoken, and anyone who mispronounces is obviously a stranger.
In Scotland for example, Milngavie is pronounced ‘Mull-Guy’ by the locals. Does this happen elsewhere, and does the phenonema have a ‘proper’ name, akin to ‘tautological’?
Because someone should mention it, I offer for consideration the La Brea Tar Pits - located in that largish city next to the county where the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have a stadium.
[ol]
[li]English unfortunately was going through a major phonetic mixup at just about the same time that A) printing and B) neoclassicism were causing spelling to be frozen.[/li][li]English also has a habit of accepting foreign spelling as-is.[/li][/ol]Many US placenames are English pronunciations of French or Spanish spellings of Amerind names. Or consider the case of “GEE-zus”, which is an English pronunciation of a Latin spelling of a Greek version of a Hebrew name.
This effect is depressingly common at all levels of geographical nomenclature. For instance, Houston, TX, has several streets named “Post Oak” that aren’t even connected.
