[NR] NORTHERN REGIONAL NAMING POLL

[barrett1 at cox.net]

This was extremely informative and I'm thankful for the time you took to write this. 
I'll give Baron Cassius some credit, though - one person researching and documentating a name for personal submission is far easier and simple than asking hundreds of people for their feedback, polling, etc, especially since a lot of the names don't pass heraldic muster, despite a majority having some research.

I'm wondering if concepts like...

Plains
Open
Meadow
Field
Horse
Hawk
Grass
Clay
Dust
Dry
...etc, should be given to a group of heraldic volunteers so that they could come to us with a list of names that they have researched, checked for conflict and spelling.
Then instead of voting on a small group of names only to have them rejected, we could go in knowing that our top choices are viable.

we might also include a list of name elements we like, stuff like... 
lund/land,
mearc/marc/march,
gard/geard,
wold/woede/wood, 
stuff like that, or merely state a preference for a certain language, like Latin, French, German, Norse, Old English/Saxon, Irish/Scots, Russian, Italian, Spanish, etc...

---- Jennifer Smith <jds at randomgang.com> wrote: 
> Honest I'm not trying to pick on our most excellent Cassius, but now
> that I am a bit more coherent after a good night's sleep...
> 
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 11:14 PM, Cameron Lewis <okrabbit at cox.net> wrote:
> > [...] If you have
> > any information from heraldic type folks on why any of these names would not
> > pass now is the time for them to be taken off the list. [...]
> 
> With all due respect, this is not how registration of a name works.
> It's the other way around: is there any information (documentation) on
> why any of these names WOULD pass?
> 
> So, with that in mind, here's a few suggestions.
> 
> Libraries are wonderful places, but don't always have a lot of
> resources for the type of thing we're trying to do. University
> libraries are much better, but not as many of us have easy access to
> those. Google Books, however, may occasionally also be useful. Given
> all that, here are some suggestions of sources to find and look in for
> possible names (either the ones already suggested, or new ones):
> 
> Bahlow, Hans. Deutschland Geographiche Namenwelt. (German placenames)
> Dauzat, Albert and Rostaing, Charles. Dictionnaire Etymologique des
> Noms de Lieux de la France. (French placenames)
> Ekwall, Eilert. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names.
> Johnston, James R. Place-Names of Scotland.
> Mills, A. D. A Dictionary of English Place-Names.
> Room, Adrian. A Dictionary of Irish Place-Names.
> Smith, A.H. English Place Name Elements.
> Watts, Victor, ed. Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Based
> on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society.
> 
> There's a great many web articles at
> "http://s-gabriel.org/names/nonhuman.shtml", all very suitable for our
> purposes.
> 
> And then in Google Books itself, you can search on "place-names",
> ignore more placenames for American states and whatnot, and then find
> some promising things. For example, there's a preview version of
> Mills' "Dictionary of English Place-Names" in google books
> (http://books.google.com/books?id=br8xcW1f_a8C), and just for fun I
> searched for 'horse', and found the following:
> 
> Aughrim (Eachroim) 'horse ridge'
> Aughris Head (Ceann Eachrois) 'horse promontory'
> Knocknagree (Cnoc na Grai) 'hill of the horse stud'
> Follifoot: Pholifet 12th cent '(place of) the horse fighting' alluding
> to a Viking sport
> Garron Point (Gearran) 'horse point'
> 
> ....and many others. Most of them I didn't really like the sound of.
> :)  One I did particularly like was:
> 
> Markinch: Marchinke 1055, Markynchs c.1290, 'horse meadow' (from
> Gaelic marc + innis)
> 
> But even better was the one above that:
> 
> Markham: Marcham 1086, Estmarcham 1192. 'homestead or village on a
> boundary' (from Old English mearc + ham)
> 
> What might even be easier, for those less inclined to look in a book,
> is to articulate the *meaning* of a name you'd like to see. For
> example, "something with 'horse'", or "something with 'red'", or
> plains, or the like. That at least gives us a search term to use when
> looking for possibilities.  In that one book, I searched for
> 'thunder', 'storm', 'noise', 'noisy', 'wind', and few others, and
> found....nothing. Those just weren't concepts used when naming places
> in England. They may be in another area, sure, but there? No, not in
> Old English, Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic, etc.
> 
> The simpler, the better.
> 
> -Emma
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