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From: Antonio Marques <no_email@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Allen Mawer born (8-5-1879)
Date: Fri, 10 May 2024 12:11:47 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> Who?
> A big name in toponymy/toponymics/toponomastics, at least in the UK.
> Founded English Place-Name Society (1923), which promoted a 
> county-by-county survey of place names of England.
> The "new" toponymics seems to involve applying to place names the same 
> criteria we apply to etymologies in general, rather than just retailing 
> local folklore.
> 
> "...it is impossible to place any satisfactory interpretation upon the 
> history of a name until we have traced it as far back as the records 
> will allow....in many cases, unless the records go a good way back, 
> speculations upon its meaning are worse than useless." (Mawer, quoted by 
> Crystal)

Could that be the guy who found out that a certain Woodhill was in fact
Wolfdale?


> 
> I recently responded to a query from someone in the USA, in a state a 
> long way from the Pacific, about a local place name said to be of 
> Polynesian origin (and said to have a certain meaning). The origins of 
> the name turn out to go back less than 50 years -- if they are not 
> completely made up (by persons still living) they go back to garbled 
> recollections of something someone remembered the locals saying on a 
> Hawaiian vacation. Of such are place name etymologies in utero, I would say.
> 

How quaint.