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#69805 05/13/02 01:25 PM
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A town in south Arkansas, originally known as Chemin Couvert, for covered way, is now called Smackover. Are there other English-language place-names that have evolved from former names in other languages?


#69806 05/13/02 02:02 PM
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Buffalo (NY) is supposed to have come from some French phrase but I tried googling it and came up blank. Lancy (sp?) Meadows in Nova Scotia (?) derives from the French name L'anse aux Meduse. Ironically (in the USn sense) the L'anse part means meadow and the Meduse part something else (jellyfish?).


#69807 05/13/02 02:08 PM
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Dear Faldage,

It's in Newfoundland, it's where the Vikings landed 1000 years ago, and it's still spelled as you spelled it, L'Anse Aux Meadows. It's just said "LANCE oh MEdoze".


#69808 05/13/02 02:15 PM
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slithy,

I know I've posted these before, but you (and many others) were not here yet so I'll do it again. Newfoundland has lots of Anglicized names, many of them from French. One funny thing about is that often, the old spelling still survives. Some of my faves:

(spelled) Bay D'espoir (said) Bay Despair
(spelled) Pouch Cove (said) Pooch Cove
(spelled) Baie Verte (said) Bay Vurt
(spelled) Port Aux Basques (said) Port-uh-Bask
(spelled) Rencontre East (said) RONcontrEEST
(original spelling) Toulinguet (now spelled and pronounced) Twilingate


#69809 05/13/02 02:46 PM
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Dear Faldage: in looking up L'Anse aux Meadows, I thought "anse" meant neck, as in "anserine" =like a goose. But French dictionary say "anse"= cove


#69810 05/13/02 03:36 PM
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"anse"= cove

Ah, the perils of a junk drawer memory. I have this one with a note pinned to it that says Farley Mowatt, book about Vikings in America


#69811 05/13/02 09:49 PM
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How about DuBois, Pennsylvania...pronounced Doo Boys. [grimace]


#69812 05/13/02 10:58 PM
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I think we did it before but

Elephant and Castle (yes it is a place)
is said to be a corruption of "Infanta de Castilla"


#69813 05/13/02 11:04 PM
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In 1614 Dutch explorer Capt. Cornelius Jacobsen Mey sailed around the tip of New Jersey into Delaware Bay. The cape was named in his honor, only it was later changed to Cape May.


#69814 05/13/02 11:09 PM
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