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Joined: Jun 2000
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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 4 |
I have been trying to find some info/explanation/history on gotham as in gotham city, New York, etc. Sorry if it sounds trivial or ignorant. Will appreciate an answer. Thank you.
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Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
And I had failed to notice that there was a place in Nottinghamshire called Gotham. It must be quite close to Newark (on Trent, not NJ).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
And didn't Enid Blyton or somebody like that have stories of the Wise Men of Gotham? I remember reading them as a child, and they certainly weren't about New York.
Bingley
Bingley
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Wow, whole bunch of people putting up their first
(of many more, hopefully) posts!
Welcome, kosacha.
P.S.--To borrow from AnnaS.--care to tell us how you
got your name?
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460
addict
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addict
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 460 |
Hi kosacha -- welcome to the board.
Brewer has the sentence "Most nations have some locality renowned for fools -- [Do you want me to go on?] -- and cites the term Gothamites for inhabitants of New York. Washington Irving is quoted as calling New York 'Gotham' in his Salmagundi (1807).
And, for Bingley, the following is cited as a nursery rhyme:
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl,
If the bowl had been stronger,
My story would have been longer.
And, for jmh:
The village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire was proverbial for the folly of its inhabitants and many tales have been fathered [why not 'mothered'?] on them, one of which is their joining hands round a thorn-bush to shut in a cuckoo.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
I'm pretty sure it was the wise men of Gotham who tried to catch the moon by dredging a pond for its reflection.
Of course they weren't AWAD journeymen -- I made it!
Bingley
Bingley
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
>>Of course they weren't AWAD journeymen -- I made it!
Bingley<<
Congrats! When's the party?
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Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 4
stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 4 |
Thanks for responding! Kosacha is the name of my grandmother's village in Bulgaria. It comes from "kosach" which stands for a person who mows grass. It is _not_ the same as lawn-mower, for there are very few lawns in the American sense in Bulgaria, let alone in Kosacha, and even fewer electrical mowers...How come the masculine gender of kosach was turned into the feminine kosach-a, I don't know.
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Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 4
stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 4 |
Thanks so much! At last some explanation. Although I will always have the sinister association from Batman's Gotham city with all the stupid penguins and Danny de Vito running amok... That is what happens when you learn about a country from its movies. Hollywood is the history book of US for the rest of the world, unfortunately.
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