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Home / Jeremy Phillips / BOOK MARK

BOOK MARK

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Place names - a new book

The IPKat has only just heard about Mark Monmonier's book, From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame. Published by the University of Chicago Press, it not only explains the origins of place names as curious as Brassiere Hills, Alaska and Molly's Nipple, Utah (below, left), but also reviews the decreasing willingness of mapmakers to accept local preferences for place names in the wake of sensitivity to racially, ethnically and scatalogically offensive toponyms.

Says the IPKat, given the importance of place names in branding and in trade mark registrability, this books looks like a great work-avoidance ritual. It's also a snip at US$25.

Weird and wonderful place names here and here
European Court of Justice ruling in Chiemsee on the registrability of place names here
BOOK MARK BOOK MARK Reviewed by Jeremy on Tuesday, August 08, 2006 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousTuesday, 8 August 2006 at 17:55:00 GMT+1

    Having just returned from the West Country and passed by the river Piddle I was amazed at the number of villages prefaced with its name. The locals insist that the council must not change them.

    Phuket is a fraud. In transliterating the Thai characters to Roman characters a mispronounciation is created; Pooket would be nearer phonetically. Try asking for a cucumber, marrow or related curcurbit in Thai!

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