Naming Rivers and Places

September 9th, 2011

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Naming Rivers and Places

Office du Jerriaissigns, transport, vocabulary

Lé bliogue Spatial Analysis présente des cartes dé noms d’riviéthes et tout chenna ès Êtats Unnis et en Grande Brétangne:

Naming Rivers and Places: The number of rivers in the US, combined with Derek’s brilliant design, make this a really compelling map. Inspired by this work I have quickly (with much less cartographic flair) extracted the major rivers and streams in Great Britain from the Ordnance Survey’s Strategi dataset and coloured them according to whether they are a “river”, “canal” (not sure if this really counts in terms of naming), “water”, “afon” (Welsh for river) and “brook”. You can see that a clear geography exists.

En Jèrri j’avons:  
In Jersey we’ve got:

  • rué = stream 
  • russé = stream 
  • canné = stream 
  • dou = brook 
  • douettîn/douottîn = small brook 
  • byi/bié = leat 
  • stchette = stream which dries up in Summer 
  • stchez = stream which dries up in Summer 
  • rangnie = stream betwen rocks at low tide 
  • bouët = muddy stream (obsolete word found in placenames) 
  • pèrquage = not strictly a stream, but an access alongside a stream 
  • plianque = a plank/bridge across a stream 

Nou-s’en trouve des noms d’pliaiche et noms d’rue par les c’mîns:  
Familiar placenames and roadnames contain some of these elements (sometimes widely known in oldfashioned spelling):

  • Lé Stchez (Le Squez) 
  • Lé Pliat Dou (= the flat brook; Plat Douet) 
  • Lé Long Bouët (Roseville Street) 
  • Lé Pèrquage (Castle Street) 
  • La Plianque Billot (York Street) 
  • Les Russieaux (Les Ruissieaux) 
  • Lé Faux Bié (= the false leat; Faux Bie) 
  • Lé P’tit Dou (= the little brook; Brook Street)