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Naming a Fictitious Location


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On the subject of fiction, I've always thought that the Pagwells would make a wonderful set of names for layouts set in the Home Counties or around. Whilst their location is never specified, I've always envisaged them to be somewhere around where Wallingford is in the real world.

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Sticking to Wales, Some welsh words could make good layout names. For example:

 

Bryn mawr - Big hill

Rheilffordd - Railway

Tref wrth y llyn - Town by the lake

Bryn yr orsaf - Station hill

Llyn twnnel - Tunnel Lake

Tref dwnnel - Tunnel town

 

I'll try and come up with some more...

 

James

 

 

Edited by 6990WitherslackHall
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It's wise to remember that a lot of Welsh places were anglicised, if the place name was too difficult to pronounce, or, it was near to another destination. 

 

A local example was Tre Illtyd. However, the Taff Vale name was Church Village, and the TVR resisted any attempts to rename it by the local council. 

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Irish ones are similarly complex. Many result from an original name being anglicised, either by translation or by being phonetically knocked-about to make it easier for English speakers to pronounce, then restored to Irish, but sometimes inexactly. There are a few rivers that are called River Owen*****, where ‘Owen’ is the mangled equivalent of Abhainn, itself equivalent of the welsh Afon and the English Avon, all of which are various forms of Celtic for river, so they become River River ******.
 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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8 hours ago, 6990WitherslackHall said:

 

I typed it in to Google Translate and apparently, it translates as "Omnibus Valley People"

 

For those not in Wales or get Welsh TV - Pobol y Cwm is a Welsh language soap opera and the Omnibws bit is the omnibus repeat.

 

The title is really People Of The Valley. Probably the closest I can think of is a Welsh Emmerdale Farm when it still had farming.

 

I think the town is called Cwmderi.

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On 02/10/2020 at 22:46, Ray Von said:

You could always add an "on sea" , "at cliffe" or "woods" etc 

I know someone who is modelling based on Leicester. I shall suggest 'Leicester On Sea' to him.

 

Joking aside, with no connection to modelling, I was looking up Ravenscar on the North East coast, between Whitby and Scarborough. It used to be simply named 'Peak' on the basis that it was the highest point of the line (650ft above sea level). So there's any number of similarly themed names for just about any reason you like.

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19 hours ago, mike morley said:

A lot of surnames derived from the places from which the bearer originated, so things like voters rolls and telephone directories (if such things still exist) can be useful.

I was a postman for 16 years and always kept an eye out for potentially useful layout-names from the names of the people on the envelopes I was delivering.  Best one I remember was Fulbrook, perfect for a layout set in the Forest of Dean.

Fulbrook would also be an appropriate name for line set in West Oxfordshire it is the name of a village in the Windrush valley just north of Burford.  A good source of appropriate names for English lines are the tomes by the English Place Name Society "Place names of xxxxxshire" that date from the 1950s - best borrowed from your local library.  They give the derivation of the names.

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5 hours ago, Derekstuart said:

I know someone who is modelling based on Leicester. I shall suggest 'Leicester On Sea' to him.

 

Joking aside, with no connection to modelling, I was looking up Ravenscar on the North East coast, between Whitby and Scarborough. It used to be simply named 'Peak' on the basis that it was the highest point of the line (650ft above sea level). So there's any number of similarly themed names for just about any reason you like.

 

Surely Leicester Forest (East), on the little known GC branch to Tamworth (running powers to Burton on Trent for beer traffic)

 

As opposed to the rather better known Leicester Forest (Midland), closed under Beeching except for football specials

 

My username /past layout used the name of a lost medieval town on Spurn Point (the sand bar moved, but the town didn't. Glug, glug...)

Edited by Ravenser
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I am currently investigating an historic Welsh watercourse called Y Bawddwr. I understand 'Bawddwr' translates as 'dirty water'? In the medieval/post-medieval periods said watercourse was used as an open sewer, hence it was known locally as the 'Foulbrooke' or the 'Shite-stream'. There should be an archaeological paper published before too long!

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Typing 'Y Bawddwr' into Google, I found http://www.discovercarmarthenshire.com/media/2491/llandovery.pdf, which on the second page states

 

4 Nant Bawddwr

Llandovery takes its name from the least significant of all the rivers which encircle it.  It served as an open sewer - no wonder it was called Bawddwr (dirty water, or Foulbrook).  In 1836 it was put into an arched culvert and the streets paved over.

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1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Yes, but if you put it into a translation engine you get an alternative meaning: bastard (let’s see whether the auto-censor allows that word).

 

Strangely enough, I don't get that translation, or at least not on Google Translate.  https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=en&text=Bawddwr gives me the English 'Baddler'.  If I change the Welsh to 'Y Bawddwr', which is the actual name of the River being discussed, I get the rather unhelpful 'The Bawddwr', which looks like no translation at all (https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=cy&tl=en&text=Y Bawddwr).

Edited by Dungrange
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My favourite approach is to take places along your chosen line but with no station - so for the Great Central in the Midlands you could have Swithland, Glen Parva, Misterton etc.  That makes it easier when planning timetables as you can use the working timetable as a basis and just add new stops.

 

If you are freelancing, another option is to take a village name in the area and upgrade it to a town.  The key is not to take a name that was uncommon in that particular area - combe shouts west country and and thorpe midlands /north east.

 

Personally, I'm not a fan of comical names, although they were very popular in the 1960s and 1970s - ever layout seemed to have a coal merchant called Ivor Biggun in those days....

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‘Combe’ is also very characteristic of the South Downs, where SFAI it means a dry valley. Moulescoomb, Pycombe, Coombe Hill etc.

 

Its pronounced pretty much like the Welsh ‘cwm’, so I wonder whether there might be an underlying Celtic root.


 

Edited by Nearholmer
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1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

The one I used was a Welsh-language dictionary but when I try it in the University of Wales dictionary it gives no translations at all.

 

I guess a lot of these on-line translation tools are not that great when we stray away from commonly used words.

 

Going back to the Welsh 'Y Bawddwr', if I split 'Bawddwr' into 'Bawd dwr' (with a space), then Google Translate gives me 'The Water Thumb'.  'Y' being Welsh for 'The' and 'dwr' being the Welsh for 'water'.  That would suggest to me that the origin of the name is perhaps derived from the shape of the watercourse or it's position relative to the other watercourses in the area.

Edited by Dungrange
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3 hours ago, Dungrange said:

Typing 'Y Bawddwr' into Google, I found http://www.discovercarmarthenshire.com/media/2491/llandovery.pdf, which on the second page states

 

4 Nant Bawddwr

Llandovery takes its name from the least significant of all the rivers which encircle it.  It served as an open sewer - no wonder it was called Bawddwr (dirty water, or Foulbrook).  In 1836 it was put into an arched culvert and the streets paved over.

 

Similar usage occurs in English.  There was a stream in Romsey (Hants) called the Sh!tlake that was an open sewer.

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1 hour ago, fezza said:

My favourite approach is to take places along your chosen line but with no station - so for the Great Central in the Midlands you could have Swithland, Glen Parva, Misterton etc.  That makes it easier when planning timetables as you can use the working timetable as a basis and just add new stops.

 

If you are freelancing, another option is to take a village name in the area and upgrade it to a town.  The key is not to take a name that was uncommon in that particular area - combe shouts west country and and thorpe midlands /north east.

 

Personally, I'm not a fan of comical names, although they were very popular in the 1960s and 1970s - ever layout seemed to have a coal merchant called Ivor Biggun in those days....

 

 

Crash course in place names:

 

-thorpe, -ham, -ton, -ing, - wick [from Latin vicus, a settlement]: all Anglo-Saxon  (-ing originally meant "people, tribe" so often found in compounds -ingham, -ington, eg Immingham, Bridlington)

 

-by, -toft : all Norse, and therefore only to be found in the East and North . - thwaite is very much North Country . -gate as a street name is also Norse, though it was sometimes used much later (my home town once had a street named Enginegate - because that was where the town's first fire engine was kept). 

 

Llan/Lan , Tre, Pol, Porth - all Celtic, so Wales, Cornwall

 

- caister/caster/chester indicates a Roman settlement or site

 

Borough/ burgh - Late Saxon / Medieval , a town 

 

Magna/Great;  Parva/Little ; "Mickle" is Norse for Big

 

Suffixes in -le -X are Norman , to distinguish one village from another

 

In sparsely populated areas , pub names could be pressed into service (Craven Arms, Fighting Cocks)

 

And the M&GN as already noticed, was forced to name one station after a drainage ditch (Counter Drove) and another after the surveyor's plot number (Twenty)

 

So "Thirty Foot" (or whatever your baseboard length is) or "Mickeldyke" are both possible Fenland stations

 

And failed medieval "new towns" or deserted medieval villages are an ideal source of ready-made authentic names

Edited by Ravenser
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23 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Irish ones are similarly complex. Many result from an original name being anglicised, either by translation or by being phonetically knocked-about to make it easier for English speakers to pronounce, then restored to Irish, but sometimes inexactly. There are a few rivers that are called River Owen*****, where ‘Owen’ is the mangled equivalent of Abhainn, itself equivalent of the welsh Afon and the English Avon, all of which are various forms of Celtic for river, so they become River River ******.
 

 

 Torpenhow Hill, Tor / Pen / How, all meaning...Hill.. (to the south west of Carlisle)

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