{"id":424,"date":"2021-01-31T20:15:45","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T20:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/changing-landscapes\/?p=424"},"modified":"2021-03-08T11:31:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T11:31:54","slug":"naming-places-how-children-make-the-world-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/changing-landscapes\/naming-places-how-children-make-the-world-their-own\/","title":{"rendered":"Naming places: how children make the world their own"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeremy Burchardt<\/p>\n

\"\"
Children playing at Julian\u2019s Bower<\/a><\/span>, Lincolnshire. The Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, Eric Guy Collection<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Place-name (toponym) research has a long and distinguished tradition in English historical scholarship, associated with the work of luminaries such as Margaret Gelling, Harry Thorpe and the English Place Name Society<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 Admittedly, there is an even longer tradition of bogus place-name derivations \u2013 just the other morning I was reading J.E. Vincent\u2019s Highways and Byways in Berkshire<\/em> (1906), which strives assiduously to prove that East and West Hendred derive their names from the Celtic \u2018Hendref\u2019, meaning \u2018a winter house in which the husbandmen house their herds and flocks\u2019, despite the fact that it has a well-attested and far more plausible derivation<\/a><\/span> from the Old English \u2018henn\u2019 (a hen) and \u2018rith\u2019 (a small stream).\u00a0 Partly no doubt to differentiate itself from the plethora of specious etymologies of this sort, for many decades academic place-name research maintained an austere focus on \u2018authentic\u2019, documented place names.<\/p>\n

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\u2018East Hendred\u2019, from Vincent\u2019s Highways and Byways in Berkshire<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet naming is always a matter of social custom and praxis, and in recent years this distinction between \u2018official\u2019 and informal place naming has been questioned.\u00a0 Researchers have become increasingly interested in vernacular place names<\/a><\/span> \u2013 the names people actually use to refer to places on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to the names recorded in maps, legal documents and the like. \u00a0One of the most exciting areas this opens up is children\u2019s place-naming practices, which seem hitherto almost entirely to have escaped scholarly attention.\u00a0 For the 2019\/20 academic year (but delayed like so much else by the pandemic) the Museum of English Rural Life<\/a><\/span> kindly awarded me a P.H. Ditchfield Fellowship to investigate this, with a particular focus, as befits the MERL\u2019s remit, on rural toponyms.<\/p>\n

Just like adults, children need names to refer to places that matter to them.\u00a0 Sometimes they use adult toponyms but there are many reasons why they may need, or choose, to invent their own.\u00a0 Firstly, they may simply not know the adult name for a particular place.\u00a0 Secondly, however, different sorts of place interest children than adults, and there may well be no adult names for some of these places.\u00a0 Research by geographers like Roger Hart, Harry Heft and Nicola Ross has demonstrated that children\u2019s spaces are often minutely differentiated \u2013 Ross\u2019s study of children\u2019s journeys to school shows that apparently insignificant features like gaps in hedges, slopes and particular trees and bushes can be invested with meaning for children (Ross, 2007).\u00a0 Thirdly, children\u2019s toponyms sometimes play a defensive role, serving to keep adults out of children-only spaces of the kind that David Sobel has explored in his illuminating study of dens, forts and special places (Sobel, 2002).\u00a0 At the same time, invented toponyms can facilitate play and strengthen friendship group identity through creating a shared frame of reference.\u00a0 There is a very well-known literary example of this \u2013 Arthur Ransome\u2019s Swallows and Amazons<\/em>, in which the Walker and Blackett children rename islands, hills, streams and promontories to convert a hitherto adult-dominated landscape into their own private play terrain. Literary toponyms are in general much better known than their real-life counterparts, and there has been some interesting research on this, especially in the context of cartography in children\u2019s fiction (Bird, 2014).<\/p>\n

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Peel Island, Coniston Water, one of the sources of Arthur Ransome\u2019s Wild Cat Island<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It has also been argued, notably by Chris Philo, that in contrast to adults, children relate to space in less instrumental ways in which dreams and reveries play a larger part (Philo, 2003). This is certainly reflected in children\u2019s toponyms in some interesting and surprising ways.\u00a0 The exotic geographical place names of Swallows and Amazons <\/em>are matched or even exceeding by many real-life examples.\u00a0 Among the invented toponyms reported to me by members of the Andover History and Archaeology Society<\/a><\/span> when I gave a talk there were \u2018the Khyber Pass\u2019, \u2018Lake Titicaca\u2019, \u2018Popocatepetl\u2019 and, rather more prosaically, \u2018Cooper\u2019s Dip\u2019 \u2013 named after an advertisement for the well-known sheep dip powder<\/a><\/span> that the children had misinterpreted as the name of the hollow where they had been playing!<\/p>\n

One of the things that makes researching children\u2019s toponyms so interesting but also so challenging is that this is almost exclusively an oral tradition, although there are occasional haphazard references in memoirs and autobiographies.\u00a0 Hence, in contrast to most areas of historical research, to find out about children\u2019s toponyms we have to generate new data rather than simply study existing archival material.\u00a0 This is one of the main things I hope to achieve through the Ditchfield Fellowship.\u00a0 Thinking back to my own childhood, most of the toponyms I and my friends used were quite simple and descriptive \u2013 \u2018Green Tin\u2019 for the corrugated-iron fence at the end of our cul-de-sac, and \u2018the jungle\u2019 for our overgrown back garden, until we cleared it.\u00a0 Others were a bit more imaginative: \u2018the South Pole\u2019 was our name for the hut far out on the common at the end of our road, towards which we set out on ambitious toboggan expeditions when it snowed. But given that we know so little about children\u2019s toponyms as yet, all examples, however prosaic and literal, are interesting.\u00a0<\/span>If you know of any, whether names that you used in your own childhood or that you have come across subsequently, it would be a valuable contribution to my research to let me know by\u00a0filling in this form<\/a><\/span>. Do feel free to comment below too if you wish. Thanks!<\/p>\n

\n

REFERENCES<\/span><\/h3>\n

H.S. Bird, Class, <\/em>Leisure and National Identity in British Children’s Literature, 1918-1950<\/em>, New York, 2014<\/p>\n

Jeremy Burchardt, \u2018Far away and close to home: children\u2019s toponyms and imagined geographies, c.1870-c.1950\u2019, Journal of Historical Geography<\/em> 69 (2020), 68-79<\/p>\n

C. Philo, ‘To go back up the side hill’: memories, imaginations and reveries of childhood, Children’s Geographies<\/em> 1 (2003), 7-23<\/p>\n

N.J. Ross, \u2018My journey to school \u2026\u2019: foregrounding the meaning of school journeys and children’s engagements and interactions in their everyday localities, Children’s Geographies<\/em> 5 (2007), 373-91<\/p>\n

D. Sobel, Children’s Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens, and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood<\/em>, Detroit, 2002<\/p>\n

J.E. Vincent, Highways and Byways in Berkshire<\/em>, London, 1906<\/p>\n

Web links and Twitter accounts<\/h3>\n

The English Place Name Society<\/a><\/span> @The_EPNS<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Institute for Name-Studies<\/a><\/span> @NameStudies<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland<\/a><\/span> @SNSBI_official<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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