TRAVELING in style : The Game of the Name

Ever since a friend of mine went to England determined to visit a hamlet called Mousehole (which, to her distress, was pronounced Mowzzle by the locals), I’ve become increasingly aware of the charm of place names in England.

They are so English-- the towns, the streets, the pubs. One can’t read about Puckeridge, Bagshot, Crackleybank, Froghall, Godalming or Upper Piddle without the imagination running riot.

Names are enhanced by British diction; what they pronounce, they pronounce with precision. But they have a penchant for ignoring letters, sometimes whole syllables, as, for instance, Saint and Ham. Saint is reduced to sn, resulting in SnPaul and SnJames . Ham becomes a mere pressing of the lips; ergo , Tottenmmmm Court.

Occasionally the relationship between spelling and pronunciation goes totally berserk; I was once introduced to a noble couple of the realm named Lewiston-Gower and informed, in the nick of time, that they should be addressed as Loosen Gore .

However pronounced, place names often comprise a story. Research of Old English informs that the syllables tun or ton means farm; ham means homestead; ley means forest; burgh a manor; and ing the people who lived at. Therefore Paddington has evolved from the people who lived near the farm of some erstwhile Saxon named Padd. Tooting Broadway is a small square in London which was once much larger; hence, Broadway. As for Tooting, those who lived on the land owned by Mr. Toot.

Picadilly Circus, it’s said, was named for a fellow who stitched up several thousand picadillies , ruffs worn by Elizabethans. (Circus here, incidentally, does not mean a carnival; the word means circle.)

Threadneedle Street was originally Three Needle Street, probably taken from the shingle of one of the many tailors who worked in that area.

Barbican Street, in the heart of old London, takes its name from a Roman tower, parts of which are still visible. Saxons named the tower burgh kennin , meaning town watchtower. Fires were built on its walls to guide travelers to and from the city.

Covent Garden--I was relieved to learn because I’ve always thought of it as Convent-- was initially called Convent, the garden of the Abbey’s monks.

Liverpool, possibly the ugliest name for a city in all the world, does not mean a pool of liver but was named after a Prime Minister who, unfortunately, bore that denomination.

Wimbledon, shrine of tennis, is much easier to pronounce these day; it was once called Wunemannedunne .

In the matter of odd names, the underground station of Elephant & Castle possibly takes the prize. Its source was the sign of an ancient tavern named after the shield design of 15th-Century soldiers.

Marylebone Street was named for Mary-on-the-Bourn Church, then unaccountably changed to Mary Le Bone. Whatever the reason, the English have lost the whole thing by pronouncing it Marlbun .

Bromley-by-Bow was once a forest near a bend in the road. This, and Newcastle-under-Lyme, are examples of the English inclination to string several words together as a place name. When I first drove through England, I found these stringers so prevalent that I invented my own hamlet, called Linsey-Woolsey-on-the-Swerve.

Driving through England can be both a pleasure and a puzzle; pleasure in the manicured beauty of the countryside and a puzzle when one is lost. This is a common occurence because knowledge of most villagers is null and void beyond the distance of a mile or two. Because they are British, they are unfailingly courteous but do a great deal of head scratching. Directions can amount to something like: north for 160 yards, through an underpass with clearance of 9 feet 9 inches; 20 yards past that point will be a house with a brown railing on which sits a pink geranium in a yellow pot. At which point a left turn is advised.

On one motoring trip, having visited Buckler’s Hard (a solid way over a marshy place) and Itchen Valley, which mercifully did not live up to its name, I headed north for a town called Longbridge. This was the site of the Austin Motor Works, reputedly somewhere south of Birmingham. No one I approached had ever heard of Longbridge until at last I pulled over to a curb to question an elderly gentleman waiting for a bus. He put his parcels on the pavement, retrieved pencil and paper from his pockets, and wrote directions I’ve kept to this day.

“Left at the roundabout; take Robin Hood Lane to Brooksnead. At the Lamb & Barley on the left, turn right into Stripping Road. At the Droitwich sign, turn left into Vicarage Road which becomes Fordhouse, and later, Pedshore. Go straight through to Staines, which becomes Maidenhead, then Ottershaw and Chobham. At the Boot & Bull turn left and keep on. This takes you to Longbridge. You can’t miss it.”

Pub names are a delight. The Widow’s Son stands on the site of a house that centuries ago belonged to a widow whose son was a sailor. She baked a hot cross bun for his anticipated return one Easter, and when he failed to show up either then or in subsequent years, the old girl continued to bake a bun for him every spring. After her death, they hung the buns from a ceiling beam and called the place The Bun House. It was ultimately replaced by the pub, and over the bar of The Widow’s Son today hangs a bundle of loathsome looking buns.

Jack Straw’s Castle was named for a man who went to the gallows just outside the tavern back in the 14th Century. Hanging seems to lurk in the background of many pubs. One such is the Magpie & Stump, which has no history to explain its shingle, but it was there that breakfast was prepared for the hangman preceding his morning’s work at Newgate Prison directly across the road.

The Ship & Shovel makes sense as it stems from the days when stevedores perforce leaned their long-handled shovels against the outside wall, thereby avoiding cracked shins within the crowded bar space.

Perhaps the most curious name is that of man called Capability Brown. It’s familiar to lovers of English gardens as Brown was a master landscape gardener in a past century and designed the grounds of many famous estates. The Malaprop of his time, Brown would survey a duke’s acreage and say, “My lord, your property has great capabilities.” It wasn’t long before his Christian name was lost to memory and he became known as Capability Brown.

My friend enjoyed Mousehole regardless of how it was pronounced, but I remain frustrated in my own search of the quirky. It stands to reason that if there is an Upper Piddle there must be a Lower Piddle, but I’ve yet to find it.