Odd words (more than they look, perhaps?)
A-bun-dance
Car-nation
Leg-end
Mode-sty
Ava-rice
Re-pud-i-ate
Places which are things:
Ash, Ebony, Rye, Beer, Ore, Ham, Stone, Cork, Rock, Bean, Minster, Capstone, Tong, Wainscot, Boot, Leek…and of course, Chipshop.
Places which sound like people:
Leonard Stanley, Margaret Marsh, Terry Lugg, George Nympton, Cherry Hinton, Edith Weston, Martin Husingtree.
Prompted by Jilly over at Jillysheep writing about odd names, some right names for the job (all encountered in the course of my first job many years ago):
Mr Roach the fisherman, Mr Stamp the postman, Mrs Waterman the baths attendant, Mrs Nursey the child-minder, Mr Highway the driving instructor, Mr Lockett the prison warder…
14 comments:
Two places which sound like people: Mavis Enderby and Boothby Graffoe - both in Lincolnshire. Mavis appeared as a minor character in the book 'Bridget Jones' Diary, and I think Boothby is the name of a comedian.
The there's Donna Nook - RAF base in Yorkshire - I think!
Thanks - I'd certainly never heard of two of those, and sorry, I left commenting to this until I could find the reference: this is obviously hearsay, but the journalist Veronica Papworth once wrote that she'd seen a road sign "To Old Bolingbroke and Mavis Enderby" to which someone had added "the gift of a son, Little Steeping" all three places being quite close to each other, as you no doubt know. I guess I first came across Mavis Enderby at school, in the Jean Ingelow poem 'The High Tide along the Coast of Lincolnshire'.
Yes - I love that one though no one is quite sure whether it's genuine - I'd like to think it is. In Lincolnshire we seem to have more than our fair share of people place names.
Good for people to know.
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