Why is Torpenhow Hill RIDICULOUS?⛰️
I’m going to tell you why Torpenhow Hill is such a ridiculous name, and if you stay until the end, I’ll share some other really ridiculous place names.
The Welsh name for hill is ‘Pen’
When the saxons arrived and asked for the Name of the Hill, the Welsh replied ‘pen’, so the Saxons added their word for hill; ‘Tor’, and created Torpen, translating to ‘Hill Hill’.
Then the Norse arrived, through the same misunderstanding they added their word for hill ‘haugr’. I don’t know the exact pronunciation but it must be something like ‘how’. The result was torpen haugr, meaning ‘hill hill hill.
Later the English called it Torpenhow Hill.
Isn’t language awesome!
This repetition of meaning is called Tautology, which also includes the common and mistakenly-used phrase ATM machine; because the ‘M’ already stands for machine, and we don’t want to call it an Automatic Teller Machine Machine! Because that sounds silly!
There are many place names that are examples of Triple Tautology, where the same meaning appears three times (more on that later), but Torpenhow Hill is the only known quadruple Tautology: with four synonymous parts.
The only problem with this awesome story, is that the locals of Torpenhow don’t use this name for the hill. They don’t even pronounce Torpenhow as Torpenhow, instead preferring the pronunciation of ‘Trapennah’.
This could mean that the name Torpenhow Hill is also a Ghost Word, which is a meaningless word that originates from an error or a misunderstanding.
This is a bit of a hiccup, but I think that regardless of the local pronunciation, you can’t argue with the origin of the name, and there is a hill beside the village. Therefore the name still stands.
As promised, here are some other examples of tautology:
Lake Tahoe translates to Lake Lake, as ‘Tahoe’ means lake in the native american language Washo
Sahara Desert means Deserts Desert, As Sahara comes from the Arabic word for deserts
Mississippi means ‘Big River’ in the Ojibwe language, so Mississippi River is Big River River
Mekong River means River River River: A triple Tautology. Mae and Khong mean river in Thai and Austroasiatic respectively.
So the next time your friend or acquaintance asks if you want to visit Torpenhow Hill, you can say ‘don’t you mean hill hill hill hill’, and they’ll reply with ‘uh, what do you mean?’ Hahaha it’ll be great!
#Torpenhow #Cumbria #tautology