Whats up with UK Town names and station names?

[NekoMaster]

As a Canadian I'm use to the idea of Americanish, French, English, and Native style town names, from which most Major train stations get their names from (I live in Oshawa, Ontario, so if I want to goto Ottawa or Toronto by train I'd take the VIA Train from the Oshawa Train Station)

Even station names for transit routes are typically named after the area or street like say, Young Street, Bloor, Spadina, North Taunton, or Downtown Oshawa, (The first three being Subway stations from Toronto)

Now over the years I've noticed that town names and stations in the UK have rather interesting names, like someone was speaking gibberish when naming the towns or stations, like

Sir, we need a new name for the SubUrb we're building....

Call it Derpitron

BUt sir that doesnt even sound like a proper name

IT WILL BE DERPITRON!!

Ok sir, no need to get angry...



So maybe I dont understand the culture in the UK that led to the naming styles of Towns, Locations, and Stations, and that's why I'm asking why does the UK have such interesting and sometimes silly sounding town and station names?

[Geo Ghost]

A lot of stations are named after the areas they are in too, or the roads which they are along. You'll see that mostly in places like London
When it comes to some of our more random town names... there are some pretty odd ones I will not deny that! Like Cockermouth...
There's also a lot pf places that end with things like: Gate, Street, Park, Green, Hill, North/East/South/West, Bridge, Way, Town, Common, Wood, Mill, House, End, Port, Road, and so on


Personally I think the US has far stranger names. I look at a few and imagine someone once picking out random letters from a scrabble bag and making a name up like that.
Mississippi, Massachusettes, Tennessee, Albuquerque... and so on. Those just seem so strange to me. Though of course, I don't know the history behind the names which might be why it is so unusual in my eyes.

[Redirect Left]

Most names in the UK are derived from historical words, often Norse, and names of high powered people who at one point controlled the local area. Although a lot would think they're just rude or no thought was out into them.

Thongsbridge, seems funny at first. Comes from the old term for 'thong' meaning a strip of land. It has a bridge. Strip of land with a bridge.
Twatt, dangerously close to an insult in many parts of the world. Old Norse for "small parcel of land". This name appears twice in the UK. Both in Scotland, make what you will of that.
Cockermouth, it lies at the end of the River Cocker, commonly referred to as the mouth of a river. Cockermouth.
Dorking, appears in the Domesday Book in 1086 as "Manor of Dorchinge". It is assumably derived from whoever Dorchinge was.

England can trace most of its settlements to the great survey of the lands of 1086, or the Domesday Book. It describes in detail what each settlement had and was worth at the time. Vital for tracking down places. Dorking for example is described as "one church, three mills worth 15s 4d, 16 ploughs, 3 acres (1.2 ha) of meadow, woodland and herbage for 88 hogs". It's a little more than that 950 years later though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book

There are worse names, some I wanted to explain here but the censor didn't like them

[NekoMaster]

Most names in the UK are derived from historical words, often Norse, and names of high powered people who at one point controlled the local area. Although a lot would think they're just rude or no thought was out into them.

Thongsbridge, seems funny at first. Comes from the old term for 'thong' meaning a strip of land. It has a bridge. Strip of land with a bridge.
Twatt, dangerously close to an insult in many parts of the world. Old Norse for "small parcel of land". This name appears twice in the UK. Both in Scotland, make what you will of that.
Cockermouth, it lies at the end of the River Cocker, commonly referred to as the mouth of a river. Cockermouth.
Dorking, appears in the Domesday Book in 1086 as "Manor of Dorchinge". It is assumably derived from whoever Dorchinge was.

England can trace most of its settlements to the great survey of the lands of 1086, or the Domesday Book. It describes in detail what each settlement had and was worth at the time. Vital for tracking down places. Dorking for example is described as "one church, three mills worth 15s 4d, 16 ploughs, 3 acres (1.2 ha) of meadow, woodland and herbage for 88 hogs". It's a little more than that 950 years later though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book

There are worse names, some I wanted to explain here but the censor didn't like them

Huh, if thats true then that might help explain a few things with English town and station names.

I'm mostly asking about all this because I've taken some interest in British culture recently because I've started building a British Themed modpack for SimCity 4 and I would like to make towns and cities semi-realistic (in design and name).

[Dave]

I know a lot less about town etymology as I'm not versed in classical and early modern history where these names originated.

However... There are some conventions of station naming.

Before the closure of stations during the 60s and 70s, a lot of towns, even "smaller" cities, had numerous stations.

So Nottingham for example... The current station is just Nottingham, but it was once called Nottingham Midland and there was another station on the Grand Central called Nottingham Victoria.

You'll note the current station was named after the company (the Midland Railway) that ran it - this was fairly common, especially on the Midland.

There are a few remaining examples, such as Wigan North Western. This was built by the North Union Railway originally as Wigan. The London and North Western Railway finally took charge of this company alone in 1921. The station wasn't renamed as Wigan North Western until after Grouping, when the newly formed London, Midland and Scottish railway took stewardship of it and Wigan's other station (Wallgate). This was merely to avoid confusion.

The Great Western - as always the black sheep that did things differently - had a fairly well-adhered to convention that stipulated if two stations existed in the same town, the second would normally have "... Town" appended to the town name. The most obvious example of this for me is Stourbridge Town (my home station), which is the smaller of two stations in the town. There's a good example of this being "reverse applied" at the Severn Valley Railway (a heritage railway), whose Kidderminster station, next to the National Rail station, is called Kidderminster Town.

The other station in Stourbridge is Junction - this is a fairly obvious name, which is rather widespread - in London there are many Junctions, such as Clapham, Willesden, Watford, Mitcham, etc. Should be noted that not EVERY junction station is named such - for example Crewe is the most "Major" junction on the network, but isn't called Crewe Junction.

In conclusion, then, most stations with a suffix will usually have come about from there being a former or current second station nearby. Some have dropped their extra names as stations have closed, others have retained them.

These can either be named after the area they're from, or some other sort of local landmark, such as a road, harbour or bridge, or a cardinal direction such as "North".

Happy to "quality assure" your picks to see if they feel natural. I often find some issues you get in fictitious mediums is that they artificially try to sound like what the person who made it thinks they should. Naming your station Bobbington Victoria might sound right, but if the station is a single platform station serving a village of 50, it's unlikely it'd be called anything other than Bobbington.

Per your other areas such as town layouts, names, areas, etc. That's something I could write about for weeks - so feel free to get in touch with questions.

[JamieLei]

Sir, we need a new name for the SubUrb we're building....

As Leftie explained, very rarely will anyone create a name for a suburb; most places had a settlement beforehand that had a defined name. Indeed, many place names in England are described in the Domesday Book, a 'Great Survey' of the land in 1086!!

There are some exceptions of course, many of which have Railway origins. As the railways largely led suburban growth, some places took their names from the railway stations, rather than the railway stations taking names from the place. Obvious examples include any location named 'Junction' (such as Clapham Junction) or Station (even though this 'station' has hasn't had a station since 1917). There are two wonderful examples of railway companies naming places in the London area. With the expansion of the Metropolitan Railway in North West London, the company evidently got bored and decided to name the station after Kingsbury, Queensbury for lack of anything more original. And the London & South Western Railway was so keen to push its 'park' ideal, it suffixed three consecutive stations with 'Park' to hammer in the point.

[Ameecher]

Regardless of eytmology of the names. Pontefract, a place that has a funny name to begin with has three great station names.

[EXTspotter]

Additionally to this, a lot of stations are not named after the settlement in which they are located. There are a few different reasons for this:

The railway company which originally built the station wanted to name it after a more glamorous or wealthy place nearby For instance Clapham Junction in London is in Battersea, Clapham proper being a couple of miles away and Clapham is hardly the main destination for trains passing though the station, whereas Battersea at the time was a much poorer district.

The station serves a larger settlement nearby but couldn't route a route directly to or through it - e.g. Pokesdown for Boscombe, Ashchurch for Tewkesbury, Cobham & Stoke D'abernon, Goring & Streetley...

As to where new towns are created and new stations are added, these often use the name of the town/village which is being expanded, the only notable exception for this I am aware of is a new town being built on the edge of Exeter, close to where I am originally from. The settlement is called Cranbrook and has in the last year had a railway station of the same name opened. The name does not appear anywhere in the history of the area and is likely one of the housing companies "safe names" - almost like the two part names that TTD generates for itself off of a list of prefixes and suffixes...

Many british town names have their routes in the languages of the people who have conquered our island over time. It can also show you the likely age of a settlement. Places which end in -chester or -cester are probably Roman in origin, things ending in -wick are usually Viking, predominantly Celtic areas have their own settlement naming convention, such as Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. If you're interested in this have a look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... nd_Ireland

[oftcrash]

Personally I think the US has far stranger names. I look at a few and imagine someone once picking out random letters from a scrabble bag and making a name up like that.
Mississippi, Massachusettes, Tennessee, Albuquerque... and so on. Those just seem so strange to me. Though of course, I don't know the history behind the names which might be why it is so unusual in my eyes.

A lot of US (and Canadian) names come from Native American/First Nation names. In southern New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut) you see a lot of places that end with "ett". I work at Narragansett Park in the city of Pawtucket, for example. In the northern Midwest where I grew up, there were a lot of names that came from both the Lakota Sioux and the Chippewa peoples. Course, here in New England there are a lot of places named after various places in the UK too.

[NekoMaster]

Canada is fairly similar in terms of Town names, a handful of town names from from Native Americans and early settlers. Though some names seem to be borrowed from other countries like the UK, as we have a couple of places that are named with the British style (somewhat descriptive names or even just a blatant rip off, like most boro/borough names)

We can take a couple of places from around where I live in Ontario for example.

I live in Oshawa, Ontario which is right on the Lake shore, and the eastern edge of the GTA. Oshawa apparently ment little creek to the local natives and they wouldn't be wrong, considering theres a pretty decent creek running from the north of Oshawa all the way to the lake, theres even a bike trail that follows the creek to the beach starting in downtown Oshawa.

Then you have places like Whitby and Scarborough, which I'm pretty sure their names are copied from British towns, and because theres more then one Whitby and Scarborough in the world, sometimes it'll mess me up when I'm browsing the net and see something like "Authorities are warning people after several injuries involving motorised picknick benches in Scarborough" (though this is the australian scarborough they're talking about)

Lastly you have a handful of places with semi-descriptive names, like Huntsville or Richmond Hill. While I don't know their histories, I imagine that Huntsville was either started by some guy named Hunt, or there where lots of Hunters (Native or settlers) in the area when they made Huntsville. As for rouge hill, heres a clip from Wikipedia.

"Sometime in the 1820s, Miles' Hill was renamed Richmond Hill. The oft repeated story is that it was so named after a visit to the area by Governor General of British North America Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond on July 13, 1819.[12] However, another well repeated story is that the area's first schoolteacher, Benjamin Barnard, was from a Richmond Hill in England, and taught all his classes the folk song The Lass of Richmond Hill because he was nostalgic for his old home. The popularity of the song with locals may account for the new name. Most authorities, including the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names report the honouring of Charles Lennox as the origin of the name."

[Redirect Left]

Regardless of eytmology of the names. Pontefract, a place that has a funny name

Broken (Fract) Bridge (Pon) - William the Conquerer passed by once and some rebels had smashed up a bridge between the River Aire on what was an important route to York. It's likely it was named due to this event.
I may be able to explain the name of one of the stations too - Pontefract was originally two distinct areas, one named Tanshelf and the other named Kirkby.
Also Pontefract cakes are, much like the modern day town, little black circles of horrendousness.

As EXTspotter mentioned, some stations aren't where you'd expect from the name. Such as Seamer (meaning Lake by the Sea, the lake no longer exists) the station is actually between Crossgates & Eastfield. I've no idea why it took the name of Seamer and not Eastfield. CrossGates is the name of a locality and station near Leeds though, which may have eliminated that one, not sure about Eastfield.

As Leftie explained, very rarely will anyone create a name for a suburb; most places had a settlement beforehand that had a defined name. Indeed, many place names in England are described in the Domesday Book, a 'Great Survey' of the land in 1086!!

I've always wanted a pet Parrot. But this is cheaper

[supermop]

Broken (Pon) Bridge (Fract)

I think you have that the wrong way around - the "ponte" is more likely 'bridge', and "fract" to be 'broken'.

[Redirect Left]

Broken (Pon) Bridge (Fract)

I think you have that the wrong way around - the "ponte" is more likely 'bridge', and "fract" to be 'broken'.

Fixed, that's what I get for writing long posts in bed after just waking up, also the words were reversed in the name. Which makes for more brain wracking than is possible when i've woken up

[Translink]

If you think English names are bad you've never been to Ireland.

The whole island is split up into "Townlands." I haven't a clue how they came abut, but they are the way they are.

For example, I live in the village of Kesh which is in County Fermanagh. Now usually, there is a church in a village, or rather, a village built around a church (some villages may have more churches of different denominations) but Kesh was rather unusually built on the border of the parish of Drumkeeran and the Parish of Magheraculmoney.
But anyways, back to townlands. I currently reside in the townland of Rosscolban. In the village there's a street called Rosscolban Avenue. There's also the townland of Mantlin, Drumnarrullagh, Letterbreen, Drumwhinny, Drumnaskea and many others. The longest street is called Crevinish Road, which rather unsurprisignly leads up to Crevinish and the ruins of Crevinish Castle.

You take a look at these names and attempt to pronounce them...
Magheraculmoney, Aghadrumskea, Eshnadeelagh, Tullyhummon, Ballymacataggart, Druminshinardagh, Drummackilowney, Ok I won't torture you any more.

On the topi c of junction stations, In the village of Kilskeery, there was a station called Bundoran Junction. Trouble is that Bundoran is over 30 miles away as the crow flies!