Happy Thought for 3 October 2025
Have a Happy Thought: Humans have almost always named places that we visit and live. Those names are sometimes just boringly descriptive, sometimes they are nods to history, or something interesting that happened in a place. One of the things that I have enjoyed learning about my latest adopted city (New Plymouth, New Zealand – a lot of “new”s!) is that the local museum has an explanation for many of the street names in the region. Some of these are sensible ( Airport Drive, which does indeed go to the Airport), others are whimsical ( Albatross Place , named after the airplane, not the bird), while others are... memorials to times or people that possibly don’t deserve such positive recognition (looking at you, Gustavus von Tempsky ) Sometimes, people new to an area give a new name to the place, even though it already has a name. Colonisation aside, this can lead to some fun “stacking” of names. You may have heard of Torpenhow Hill in England. The name comes from successive l...