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 language speakers asking the existing inhabitants “hey, what do you call that hill over there?” and then adding their own word for “hill” either at the beginning or end, which ever way their language works. The name has been broken down thusly: “Old English torr, Celtic *penn, and Old English hoh, each of which mean 'hill'.” Theres’s even a possible Torpenhow Hill-Mount reference, thanks to the Normans bringing French into the mix.

Finally, there are towns like Murrumbeena in Australia that just decided to name all of its streets... after other cities in Australia.

Thanks to https://aus.social/@ajft/114465927508108360 for bringing this wonderful news into our lives!

Meanwhile the nearby town of Elwood has a poets’ quarter:

Hopefully this inspires you to look... and look again... at some street names in your town. Who knows what delights you will find!