General Chat

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

It's hard for me to seperate the fact from the jokes here tbh. Are the first two paragraphs legit?

Sorry, yes all my answer was a joke, but loosely based on an actual truth. That in the last 200 years London has expanded to swallow towns and villages that for 2,000 years were considered to be outside London.

In the 1750’s people were worried that the relentless expansion of London would mean it would soon be pushing up against neighbouring places such as St Georges Fields (Hyde Park), Lambeth, and Clapham. Places we would now consider an integral part of inner London.

I have a fairly decent 800 page history of London. It doesn’t mention Tottenham once, which feels about right for how important the place is. Although saying that, the best Indian restaurant in London, The Agra, is just off Tottenham Court Road.

[Xela]

16 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

I will say that it is kinda quirky the club have Henry Percy’s nickname as part of the club’s name. It was only relatively recently I learned the names were directly linked. I’m not sure what I thought before. 

According to wiki

Quote

The name of one of England's football clubs, Tottenham Hotspur F.C., acknowledges Henry Percy, whose descendants owned land in the neighbourhood of the club's first ground in the Tottenham Marshes.

 

[KenjiOgiwara]

8 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Kinda curious as to why you think Tottenham is an unusual name, @KenjiOgiwara? Maybe it’s overfamiliarity on my part, but is it a stranger place name than say, Runnymede or Braintree?

I will say that it is kinda quirky the club have Henry Percy’s nickname as part of the club’s name. It was only relatively recently I learned the names were directly linked. I’m not sure what I thought before. 

I dunno tbh. It's something about totten and ham that just is funny to me. Don't you have some words like that? It's like the Norwegian word for fork, which is gaffel. I can genuinly spend minutes chewing on that word and never figure it out. I've done that my entire life. It's always that word that's funny to me too. 

[Seat68]

2 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I dunno tbh. It's something about totten and ham that just is funny to me. Don't you have some words like that? It's like the Norwegian word for fork, which is gaffel. I can genuinly spend minutes chewing on that word and never figure it out. I've done that my entire life. It's always that word that's funny to me too. 

We don’t see ham as odd in place names here. Its very common. 

[blandy]

7 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

We don’t see ham as odd in place names here. Its very common. 

Yes. For example there’s Porkshire, Kingswineford, the whole of the sow west of England, piggleswade, and so on.

[KenjiOgiwara]

11 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Without googling, ham will derive from hamlet, a kind of village here in britain. So my guess way back in a single digit century, toten had a hamlet. 

Sorry to bring one back up, but does that mean Toten is an area or county? 

[Mark Albrighton]

18 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I dunno tbh. It's something about totten and ham that just is funny to me. Don't you have some words like that? It's like the Norwegian word for fork, which is gaffel. I can genuinly spend minutes chewing on that word and never figure it out. I've done that my entire life. It's always that word that's funny to me too. 

Not sure how many words are like totten.  It’s a bit like totem as in totem pole but that word doesn’t often come up in my day to day use anyway.

I suppose the way it’s pronounced is slightly strange. It’s not pronounced “Tot-ten-ham”, it’s generally more like “Tot-num”. Of course there’s the way Ossie Ardiles said “Totting-ham” which is the go to jokey way of saying it I think.

But again I think that’s true of a few places. I live down the road from a place called Tettenhall. In my life, I’ve met one solitary person who insisted on pronouncing it as “Tet-en-hall” (she was a bit of a Hyacinth Bucket figure). Everyone else says “Tet-nall”.

[Seat68]

3 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Not sure how many words are like totten.  It’s a bit like totem as in totem pole but that word doesn’t often come up in my day to day use anyway.

I suppose the way it’s pronounced is slightly strange. It’s not pronounced “Tot-ten-ham”, it’s generally more like “Tot-num”. Of course there’s the way Ossie Ardiles said “Totting-ham” which is the go to jokey way of saying it I think.

But again I think that’s true of a few places. I live down the road from a place called Tettenhall. In my life, I’ve met one solitary person who insisted on pronouncing it as “Tet-en-hall” (she was a bit of a Hyacinth Bucket figure). Everyone else says “Tet-nall”.

My satnav calls eccleshall, eccles hall. 

[Seat68]

6 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Sorry to bring one back up, but does that mean Toten is an area or county? 

Assuming it was a person. We have a lot of places that are either named after a river, e.g Weymouth, basically a settlement on the mouth of the river wey. We name a lot of places like this. Chippenham, was named after an anglo saxon king, Cyppa’s ham. So Tottenham is named after a farmer called Tota, tota’s hamlet. 

[mjmooney]

20 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

Assuming it was a person. We have a lot of places that are either named after a river, e.g Weymouth, basically a settlement on the mouth of the river wey. We name a lot of places like this. Chippenham, was named after an anglo saxon king, Cyppa’s ham. So Tottenham is named after a farmer called Tota, tota’s hamlet. 

Large numbers of place names (particularly in the north-east of England) are derived from old Norse (Viking settlements). The suffixes are the clue: 

-thorpe (village)
-toft (farm)
-keld (spring)
-ness (cape)
-by or -bie (town, farm or settlement)
-kirk (church) 

etc. 

[sidcow]

12 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Without googling, ham will derive from hamlet, a kind of village here in britain. So my guess way back in a single digit century, toten had a hamlet. 

Yes

Tottenham 

Birmingham 

I wonder if en is the same as ing as well which derives from in I think? 

[Mark Albrighton]

It must have been discussed before but Northampton being named so always makes me curious. I understand the entomology of it, north of a home town, or meaning to that extent.

What I find curious is why that was the most northernly location where that happened. Southampton, fair enough that is pretty southern. But why didn’t somewhere more northern get called Northampton. Or, if it’s naming was relative to a large settlement, let’s say London, why didn’t somewhere like Kettering or Peterborough get named “Northampton”?

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

10 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

It must have been discussed before but Northampton being named so always makes me curious. I understand the entomology of it, north of a home town, or meaning to that extent.

What I find curious is why that was the most northernly location where that happened. Southampton, fair enough that is pretty southern. But why didn’t somewhere more northern get called Northampton. Or, if it’s naming was relative to a large settlement, let’s say London, why didn’t somewhere like Kettering or Peterborough get named “Northampton”?

I’m purely speculating but I would guess there was a time when all the Hamptons were just called Hampton. Then the differentiator was added later.

’”Which Hampton are you talking about?”

”The Hampton up north”

“Oh yeah North-Hampton”

...type thing.

 

 

 

[Mark Albrighton]

23 minutes ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

I’m purely speculating but I would guess there was a time when all the Hamptons were just called Hampton. Then the differentiator was added later.

’”Which Hampton are you talking about?”

”The Hampton up north”

“Oh yeah North-Hampton”

...type thing.

 

 

 

Yeah that probably was the case, but I suppose I find it slightly odd that that was the most northern place where that name stuck. There wasn’t a Hampton in Lancashire where you might refer to the north of that, for instance?

Edit - maybe it’s simply that “hampton” as a suffix was really only used in more southernly areas. Maybe it didn’t travel much beyond Watling Street. So Northampton would be a more northern hampton.

Edited June 18, 2021 by Mark Albrighton

[blandy]

5 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Tottenham is named after a farmer called Tota, tota’s hamlet. 

Oh, no this is completely wrong *

Tottenham is so named because back in the day it was a renowned hamlet of the dead (die Toten in german). It was obviously therefore named as such because (back in the teutonic ages) it was a small settlement infested with Zombies. To this day there are still regular outbreaks of the undead marauding through the area (mainly Saturdays, 3pm), hence the name remains.

 

*it isn't wrong

[Genie]

Just put the heating on for an hour 

[Xela]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

Just put the heating on for an hour 

Not quite that bad, but i've just shut my windows for the first time in about 10 days! 

[El Zen]

On 18/06/2021 at 08:03, KenjiOgiwara said:

It's like the (…) fork(...). I can genuinly spend minutes chewing on that(…)

You might be doing it wrong. 

[KenjiOgiwara]

On 18/06/2021 at 14:28, blandy said:

Oh, no this is completely wrong *

Tottenham is so named because back in the day it was a renowned hamlet of the dead (die Toten in german). It was obviously therefore named as such because (back in the teutonic ages) it was a small settlement infested with Zombies. To this day there are still regular outbreaks of the undead marauding through the area (mainly Saturdays, 3pm), hence the name remains.

 

*it isn't wrong

Digression, but always cracks me up. There's an area of Norway called Toten. Thus there's also a trucking company called Toten Transport.

[Rugeley Villa]

On 18/06/2021 at 16:22, Genie said:

Just put the heating on for an hour 

The cheaper option would have been to put an extra layer on?