I came across a reference to the Cinque Ports this morning. I knew they were in England (a note in the article counted replies to the question, where were they, and over 60% of those who responded thought they were in either France or Belgium). Turns out the Cinque Ports were Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich.
This led me to think about other geographic names and expressions. I wonder what all of you have to contribute?
I did find out a bit about two, just to get started:
Hanseatic cities
It seems the principal cities of the Hanseatic League were Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Visby, Novgorod, Bruges and Bergen, along with quite a few others, including inland cities. (Note that several hundred years ago, Bruges was a seaport.)
The Dry Tortugas
An island chain in the Caribbean, off the coast of Florida.
The Horse Latitudes
Two belts of latitude where winds are light and weather is hot and dry. There is one in each hemisphere at about 30 deg. latitude with a north-south range about 5 degrees, following the seasonal migration of the sun. The name is supposedly from the fact that Spanish ships transporting horses to the new colonies would be becalmed in mid-ocean long enough to cause a shortage of water and horses would have to be thrown overboard. Columbia Encyclopedia
And from Hanseatic League we get interesting derivation of silver money being in pounds sterling.
In the eastern part of Washington State (USA) there are three cities known collectively as "the Tri-Cities." I wonder how many other couplings of three cities elsewhere share the same name?
Dallas and Fort Worth are collectively known to their inhabitants as the "metroplex". Sounded like a movie theatre to me, but, hey, I'm only a visitor to those parts!
> The Horse Latitudes
That reminded me of 'The Roaring Forties' in the Indian Ocean I was taught about in primary school
>An island chain
Or 'archipelago', ... it just rolls off the tongue eh.
http://www.romegeorgia.com/sevenhills.htmlThis is the first site I found that gives an explanation of the name. I was looking for the Seven Hills of Rome. In one of Clive Cussler's (geez, I can hardly believe that's anyone's real name, but apparently it is) books, he says there's a Seven Hills, Texas, named for the resemblance to the seven hills of Rome. I typed seven hills into the search window, and was told there were 674,000+ entries,
everything from the movie Seven Hills of Rome, to schools,
mental health centers, and pet shops.
>>>couplings of three cities elsewhere share the same name<<<
In Tennessee, near where my parents live there is an area called Tri-Cities. It includes Bristol, Johnson City, and Kingsport.
In North Carolina I know of no "Tri-Cities," but there are the Triad and the Triangle, which are both groupings of 3 cities. I live in the Triangle, which consists of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. The area inside the 'triangle' is called Research Triangle Park. (lots of high tech universities in the triangle, and lots of high tech companies in RTP)
Tri-cities
Pittsburgh, while not part of a tri-city combo, has (or had) Three Rivers Stadium because the city is located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which form the Ohio River.
NY is filled with "fake rivers"-- the East river and the Harlem River in NYC are both tidal straits, not really rivers, and the Niagra river (up state) is a also a strait-- between Lake Onterio and Erie.
and technically the Hudson river is a fjord-- not a river. (southern most fjord in NA) Near USMA --West Point the river is about 250 feet deep. at the harbor end, its silting up, but still meets the defination of a fjord.
At the newspaper where I worked we had an editorial conference about how to differentiate between the area where the land meets the ocean and the towns along the coastline. Finally decided to go with the commonly used local differentiation : the land-ocean as the seacoast and the towns near the ocean as The Seacoast.
The Seacoast towns are (north to south) Portsmouth, Rye, North Hampton, Hampton, Seabrook and Hampton Falls. All but Hampton Falls abuts the ocean but Hampton Falls is so integral to the area that it is included in the group. What The Falls lacks in beach it makes up for with a wonderful apple orchard where we can buy variety of apples galore for every eating/cooking purpose and in winter also cross-country ski on the paths through the groves thanks to the Wagner Family which owns Applecrest.
wow
Why do I suddenly feel the need to have a piece of buttered,warmed apple pie? Must be a Yankee ...
(Mouth watering emoticon here).
To see what we are up to check us out at www.SeacoastNH.com
Apparently the Horse Latitudes were also known as the doldrums. The doldrums were any area in the open ocean where a ship could become becalmed. The word of course is also used to describe a dull, listless feeling or general gloominess. Probably how I'd feel being stuck for an extended period on a boat in equatorial waters.
Since nobody else chose to elaborate on the connection between Hanseatic League and sterling silver, I will.
The members of the Hanseatic League each had trade outposts in Britain. There were two main groups: The Easterlings and the Westerlings. Each had a silver coinage of such dependable value that there arose a demand for it, and the phrase "Pound Sterling" became current.
I checked encyclopedia and got information that appears to conflict with what I read in Widener Library so many years ago. It gives much earlier date than Hanseatic League.
ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
pound sterling
the basic monetary unit of Great Britain, divided (since 1971) decimally into 100 new pence. The term is derived from the fact that, about 775, silver coins known as "sterlings" were issued in the Saxon kingdoms, 240 of them being minted from a pound of silver, the weight of which was probably about equal to the later troy pound. Hence large payments came to be reckoned in "pounds of sterlings," a phrase later shortened to "pounds sterling." After the Norman Conquest the pound was divided for accounting purposes into 20 shillings and into 240 pennies, or pence. In medieval Latin documents the words libra, solidus, and denarius were used to denote the pound, shilling, and penny, which gave rise to the use of the symbols £, s., and
Sort of on topic: here's a link to an AWAD week when the
theme was Eponyms derived from place names.
http://wordsmith.org/awad/archives/1097
> Seven Hills
On the opposite side of the Rhine river from Bonn there are some beautiful hills known as the 'Sieben Gebirge' (roughly the 'Seven Range'), so it doesn't surprise me Jackie found so many results
Other places to be built on seven hills include:
Edinburgh (Calton Hill, Castle Hill, Corstorphine Hill, Craiglochart Hill, Braid Hill, Blackford Hill, and Arthur's Seat)
http://www.edinburghscience.co.uk/aboutedinburgh.htmand
Sheffield with its seven hills, carved by six rivers, trying to shed the image given in the film "The Full Monty"
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/A-C/biblst/prospectiveundergraduates/livinginshef.htmlNew to me is Worcester, Massachusetts but I expect that there are others out there. There also seem to be a lot of places called "Seven Hills".