[NR] Results from the NORTHERN REGIONAL NAMING SURVEY

[Jennifer Smith]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 8:50 AM, Cameron Lewis <okrabbit at cox.net> wrote:
> Romance languages are not being ruled out and any translation in any language was welcomed in the process.  We spoke about translations in a meeting last fall and that is where we run into problems.  Calontir, someone remembered as meaning heartland from a song or something (maybe someone with better knowledge could help out here) and so we would not be able to register another translation of that for a region name.

Point of order: if we're talking registerability, the translation
doesn't matter for purposes of conflict. Sound and appearance do, yes.
 I think the objection raised about Calontir was just pointing out
that if we chose a name that meant 'heartland', that we'd have two
'heartland' areas right next to each other. :)

More importantly, the name has to be in a documentable period style
pattern, which is unfortunately where many of the proposed names fall
down... just because you can translate a few words into a language
doesn't mean the *pattern* is a period one! To quote from the Rules
for Submission, "for example, there is a pattern of using the names of
kinds of animals with -ford in the attested English place names
Oxford, Swinford and Hartford. A case could be made for inventing a
similar name like Sheepford."  But not, you see, for Busyford; "busy"
might be descriptive of the ford, but isn't an animal and thus doesn't
match the pattern.

-Emma
(one of them pesky heralds)