ORDNANCE SURVEY BLOG: Did you know that Wednesday 13 October is English Language Day? Set up by the English Project, a Winchester based charity, English Language Day seeks to recognise the richness and vibrancy of English in all its forms.
To celebrate, we’re partnering with them for something called Location Lingo. If you look at a map, you’ll find ‘official’ place names, but those aren’t necessarily what those places are called in everyday life. In fact we probably all use names that would look pretty out of place on an Ordnance Survey map!
There are the obvious ones, like The Big Smoke and Pompey but there are hundreds of others. Take, for example, these three nicknames suggested by @PontoonDock – ‘Cas Vegas’ for Castleford, ‘Stalyvegas’ referring to Stalybridge and the wonderful ‘Ponte Carlo’ for Pontefract.
So the idea of Location Lingo is to capture these names and the colourful stories behind them.
“We are throwing a very wide net in this national trawl for what we call Location Lingo,” says Bill Lucas of the English Project. “Everyone knows the big national nicknames like Auld Reekie for Edinburgh but we are also interested in the names that are not so well known and might be used only by a neighbourhood, a village community, a workplace, or even by an extended family or group of friends.”
However, there is a serious purpose to the project.
As emergency service control rooms become centralised, they run the risk of losing local knowledge and as a result could be confused by callers who use Location Lingo. If I rang up to report a robbery on the ‘Flowers Estate’ in Southampton, there is little chance that this niche name for a small part of the city would be on any map.
That is why we’re investigating the possibility of building an ‘alternative gazetteer’ that references many of these nicknames and pet-names which could include, for example, a popular name for a road junction or bridge.
“With the huge variety of place nicknames that exist we could never hope to capture them all ourselves” says Glen Hart, our Head of Research. “Technically this research goes by the name of Vernacular Geography which is looking into which names should be recorded and how best to discover them.
“Projects like Location Lingo can provide us with useful research data to help answer these questions. Organisations like the emergency services rely on our information when responding to 999 calls, so by having the most complete set of ‘unofficial’ names we could help the emergency services quickly locate the right place, and maybe even save lives.”
So, the Location Lingo project is a lot of fun but also has the chance to do some good.
If you want to submit your own Location Lingo you can visit the project’s website where you can add your contribution directly onto an OS OpenSpace app from Monday 11 October.
Alternatively you can follow the English Project on Twitter at @TheEnglishProj and tag your tweet with #localing.
