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BBC News: Would you know where Barlick was? or Amazingstoke?

And would you realise that Where upon Earth refers to Wath upon Dearne?

The English Project and Ordnance Survey have launched the Location Lingo project to collect the nicknames, pet names or hate names which local people use for places around them. As well as a record of local linguistic richness, the project could help emergency services locate places more quickly.

Some names that are already recorded on the Location Lingo interactive map are simply shortened forms. So the Lancashire towns of Skelmersdale and Barnoldswick become Skem and Barlick.

Some reflect how people feel about the place they are from: Basingstoke becomes Amazingstoke, while Swindon is Swindump. Glen Hart, the head of research for the Ordnance Survey, told BBC Radio Sheffield’s Rony Robinson that the project is about more than just towns or cities:

“We’re interested in nicknames for lots of other areas as well, such as shopping malls, roundabouts, parks and roads. All of these can acquire nicknames and those can be of a lot more interest to the emergency services. In Sheffield, for example, there is a Magic Roundabout, as well as the one in Swindon. Sheffield’s is the Moor End Roundabout. Sheffield’s quite interesting because a lot of the names we get can be derogatory but the ones we have on the map for Sheffield are more complimentary. There is Sheff Town – the reason given for that was that it had the feeling of a small town as opposed to a large city. Steel City is the obvious one but there is also Special-field which is quite a nice one.”

“One that has actually proved very popular, right across the country, and which isn’t too complimentary, is Meadowhell for Meadowhall. But that just goes to show it is not just towns and cities which get these nicknames.”

You can contribute to the project through the Location Lingo website.

Here are some of the names contributed by listeners to Rony Robinson’s show on BBC Radio Sheffield:

“I call my town (on occasion) ‘rot’em’ because anybody slagging my town, that’s what I think” – Christine in Rotherham.

“I worked with a bloke who used to call Whiston in Rotherham, Whistovan in Rothberg.” – Mick the Blade.

“In the 50s Wybourn (in Sheffield) was known as Dodge City. Dodge rent. Dodge electric meter man. Dodge gas man. Dodge coal man and loan man.” Pete

Read the story at the BBC

BBC NEWS: From Mevafishy, through Barlick to Amazingstoke, nicknames for Britain’s towns and cities are legion. Now a new project seeks to create a database of what we really call where we live.

What we name things says as much about us as it does about them. Take cars, for instance; I’ve come across pet names which include Eric Robinson (a famous bandleader), Pompidou (a former President of France) and Oscar (presumably Wilde). I also know someone who insists on referring to the TV remote as a “klangenstuhl”.

And so it goes for places.

“No man is an island… apart from Barry,” goes the old quip. And the South Wales resort of Barry Island is just one of countless places in Britain to have its own nickname. As a major filming location for BBC television’s award-winning comedy, Gavin and Stacey, it was christened BarryWood by the actor Russell Tovey.

Some slang names are just simple abbreviations, so in Lancashire Skelmersdale became Skem, Barnoldswick is known as Barlick and Ricky is the chummy moniker given by locals to Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire.

And, in the historic tradition of spoken English, ironic puns abound.

The comedian and broadcaster Phill Jupitus says that his home town of Stanford Le Hope in Essex is called Stanford No Hope by locals.

Elsewhere, the picturesque Cornish port of Mevagissey is becoming known as Mevafishy, for obvious reasons, and the South Yorkshire town of Wath-Upon-Dearne is often cheekily referred to as Where Upon Earth.

Now, as part of English Language Day on Wednesday 13 October, the English Project and Ordnance Survey are launching Location Lingo, an interactive project which aims to uncover the nicknames, pet names and hate-names which people use in their daily lives for the places which are near and dear to them.

“The name that people conjure up or create for a place forms an emotional connection,” explains Winchester University’s Professor Bill Lucas, a patron of the English Project.

“So Basingstoke becomes Amazingstoke, Swindon is known as Swindump and Padstow, home town of chef Rick Stein, is nicknamed Padstein.”

Other nicknames, though, require a little explanation. In Scotland, the 80-odd roundabouts which grace the new town of East Kilbride have led it to acquire the name Polo Mint City.

Guz Argyle

Glitz, glamour, grey skies – filming on the streets of Barrywood

Devonport, the Royal Navy’s home in Plymouth, is known in the Senior Service as Guz, short for “Guzzle”, a comment on West Countryfolk’s alleged devotion to cream teas.

And in Northern Ireland, local radio presenter Gerry Anderson came up with the jocular name Stroke City to describe the politically contentious Londonderry/Derry.

The practice of bestowing pet names extends far beyond towns and cities, though. Millions of people in the UK have heard of the complex feat of engineering known as Spaghetti Junction. But just how many are aware of its proper title – Gravelly Hill Interchange, where junction 6 of the M6 meets the A38(M) Aston Expressway in Birmingham?

Beyond this, there are places like the Banana Bridge, a curvy crossing over the River Itchen in Hampshire, and one of London¹s newest landmarks, the Gherkin, otherwise known as the Swiss Re building.

And the intimacy of a place name can also extend to what occurs there.

Quirkiness

“Many of these names may also refer to little natural features of landscape where people go for a hug and a kiss,” says Prof Lucas.

As well as creating what promises to be a fascinating resource detailing the linguistic richness – and sheer quirkiness – of pet place names, there is a practical side to the project.

“But the information from Location Lingo could prove vital. Organisations like the emergency services rely on our information when responding to 999 calls, so by having the most complete set of nicknames we could help the emergency services quickly locate the right place, and maybe even save lives.””With the huge variety of place nicknames that exist we could never hope to capture them all ourselves,” says Glen Hart, Ordnance Survey’s head of research.

Anyone in Great Britain can submit their location lingo – and, if possible, the story behind it­ to the English Project website where they can either plot their entry on an interactive map or fill in a simple form.

As Bill Lucas puts it: “It’s not about apostrophes or no apostrophes. Its about what a place name means to you.”

Find out more 

Prof Bill Lucas of the English Project will be talking about the Location Lingo scheme on Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday, 13 October

Read this story on BBC News

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.

Read the story on the OS Blog

SWORDPLAY: These days, national pride is a complex issue. By way of example, there are those who, casting their gaze to Europe for the European Championships, will sigh with quiet relief precisely because of the absence of the England football team and certain of its supporters. But when it comes to language, rather than the beautiful game, we can afford to be proud, sans guilt or complication. The English language is rich, nuanced, complex, creative; a delight for all of us. Here’s Times columnist Edward Fennell with a piece celebrating our mother tongue and explaining a landmark initiative by The English Project – ‘Kitchen Table Lingo’.

Who does the English language belong to? Inevitably that is a question that must be answered if you are embarked on a venture called ‘the English Project’, which aims to set up a permanent exhibition and associated activities dedicated to the story of the English language.

While some languages are hedged about by official constriction, English is spontaneous, subject to the laws of natural selection rather than regulation. So a central tenet of our philosophy for the English Project is that English owes its vigour and vitality to the inventiveness and creativity of ordinary English speakers and users. Important though the lexicographers and dictionaries may be, they trail behind the living exponents of the language – the man, woman and child in the street (or home, or workplace or nursery).

So our central conviction about the character and heritage of English is that it is the most inclusive phenomenon in the culture. Whatever social, ethnic or generational divides may exist we all share the same core language and are playful and innovative in our use of it. That is why, left to their own devices, people love talking about language (even though they may clam up about it in an academic environment).

That was our belief. But did it hold water?

In devising ‘Kitchen Table Lingo’ we put our convictions to the test. By setting out the proposal that ordinary families and social groups had their own – often private – language through which they expressed their creativity and delight in language, we were risking a lot. By inviting the general public to ‘go public’ on their private vocabularies we were exposing ourselves to the acid test of truth.

We need not have worried. Within less than a couple of hours on the morning of 6 June 2008 when we launched Kitchen Table Lingo hundreds of contributions were pouring in. Within a couple of weeks we had thousands of entries. What was even more exciting was that we had set off an informal national festival of language. Not only wasKitchen Table Lingo featured in virtually every newspaper but it was on the BBC, ITV and CNN. Most significantly, though, it was picked up by local radio stations across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Listeners by their thousands phoned in with their words and, against a background of gloomy news, people began to laugh about language. BBC Radio Solent, for example, said that it had never before had such a response to a topic. It ran the story for a whole week with a barrage of people phoning in with their family or local words. Our only regret was that we could not pick up and record all these words which were pouring in to the media.

So just two weeks after Kitchen Table Lingo had gone live we thought we had proved a point. Not only was there cherished ‘private language’ out there (as if in an unexplored continent) but people were fired up, fascinated and frank in talking about it in an unprecedented way. We had unleashed the underlying democracy of the English language in which speakers devise new words constantly to meet new needs – or just because they enjoy it. And all we had to do was stimulate them and then collect this harvest of words for relaying on to the wider community for their delectation, amusement and use.

On that basis we feel more confident than ever that the English Project is right to celebrate the language and the creativity of the people in a process going back 1500 years. This is, after all, the heritage of every one of us.

For more about the English Project (of which Edward Fennell is a trustee) and Kitchen Table Lingo go to www.englishproject.org

Read the article in Swordplay

THE TELEGRAPH: A new dictionary explaining the difference between a “doobly”, a pair of “yupes” or an everyday “embuggerance” is being compiled by experts.

Thousands of words which are already in everyday use but have never found their way into the dictionary are being collected for a new guide to the more colourful side of the English language.

The English Project, a £25 million language study, is collecting examples of what experts call “kitchen table lingo” – words and phrases in common use within groups such as families, schools or circles of friends. To qualify the words must not have made it into a dictionary before but have to have been in use by three or more people for at least a month.

Organisers say they have already received more than 700 entries since launching their search last week. Favourites so far include “yupes” – said to be a term in use at Sandhurst military academy – meaning underpants. Perhaps the most commonly used term submitted is “embuggerance”, euphemistically employed by the author Terry Pratchett to describe his feelings about the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. According to research so far, the term is thought to have been coined by a Ministry of Defence official during the Falklands War to describe his frustrations.

More baffling to the uninitiated, a “doobly” is a word for a television remote controller – one of several submitted by families, suggesting that the fate of that missing remote is one of the major talking points of modern family life. Other words for the device collected so far include a “podger”, the rhyming term “melly”, a “boggler” and the more common “zapper”.

The words collected will be published online and in books.

Read this article in the Telegraph

SOUTHERN DAILY ECHO: A Packed meeting in Winchester last night saw the launch of a hugely ambitious project to celebrate the English language.

The English Project is aiming to open a £25m tourist attraction in Winchester city centre in 2012. It would be the first museum in the world dedicated to English.

It will use interactive media, live interpretation, innovative displays, archives and temporary exhibitions to tell its story, from the language of a few Germanic tribes in the fifth and sixth centuries to the global language of today.

The official launch was held last night at the city’s university before a packed audience of 350 people. The trustees hope to develop the Woolstaplers Hall, which is part of the £100m Silver Hill project. They said it could attract 100,000 to 150,000 visitors a year.

Professor David Crystal, a leading expert on the language, gave a lecture about how English could evolve. He said: “I see the English Project as a timely means of fostering public interest in language. It will provide a model which I would expect other English-speaking countries to follow.”

 Professor Christopher Mulvey, one of the trustees, said: “To realise this vision will cost millions of pounds. We are developing a strategy to raise the money and although we don’t pretend it will be easy we have made a credible start.”

Read the story in the Echo