Paul Anthony Jones - Around the World in 80 Words: A Journey Through the English Language

For my parents,
Leon and Maureen

A book that travels, for everyone who cant

I ts easy to forget that place names just like first names, surnames, the days of the week and months of the year are all still just words at the end of the day. As such, they have meanings, histories and etymologies all their own.

London, for instance, is thought to be the descendant of an ancient Celtic word perhaps meaning something along the lines of town at the unfordable part of the river. Britain, meanwhile, probably derives from an equally ancient Celtic word, meaning tattooed people a somewhat appropriate name for what is now believed to be the most tattooed nation in Europe.

And it doesnt stop there. Casablanca literally means white house. Beijing means northern capital, Nanjing means southern capital, and Tokyo means eastern capital. Chicago means place of the wild onion. Topeka means good place to dig potatoes. And Cleveland, Ohio, was named after its founder, Moses Cleaveland; according to local folklore, the extra A in Cleavelands name was dropped so that it could fit more easily on the front page of the local newspaper.

The Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has a name meaning end of the elephants trunk. The Tajikistani capital, Dushanbe, literally means Monday

But what if we were to turn these etymologies around? So instead of looking at the origins of the place names in our atlases and gazetteers, we look at the origins of the words in the dictionary that are themselves derived from place names? By doing that, we suddenly have a whole new set of stories to tell.

Some words of this kind lets call them geonyms seem obvious when you think about it. Turkeys, Brazil nuts and Panama hats are all familiar examples, as are French fries, Danish pastries and Jerusalem artichokes. But the stories behind even these familiar terms arent quite as straightforward as you might presume.

Turkeys dont actually come from Turkey, after all, and nor do Jerusalem artichokes come from Israel. So what happened there? And as soon as you start to find out that Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama, and that French fries were invented across the border in Belgium well, things start to take something of an interesting detour...

Its etymological stories precisely like these that bring us here now at the start of a grand tour both of the world, and of the English dictionary. Ahead of us lies a 70,000-mile route, as the crow flies, and an itinerary comprised entirely of towns and villages, cities and countries (and at least one mountain) whose names have, in some way or another, become immortalised in our language.

Our journey will begin in London, from where well head out across to France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, then north into Scandinavia, east into Russia, and south to the Mediterranean. From the Balkans, Central Europe, Spain and Portugal, well travel down through Africa, north to the Middle East, then out across Central Asia to the Far East. From there, well turn south once more, down through the islands of the western Pacific Ocean and stopping off for etymological tours of Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand.

Jumping across the Pacific Ocean, well land in the far north of North America, making stops in Alaska, Canada, the western USA, and marking the 50,000-mile mark of our journey in Mexico. From there, destinations in Central and South America will take us as far south as the Falkland Islands, before we enter the home straight heading north through the likes of Brazil, Bermuda, the eastern United States and Canada, before a solitary stop in Iceland breaks up our return journey across the Atlantic, back to the British Isles.

It will be an epic trip, no doubt about it. And along the way, there are some of the dictionarys most extraordinary etymological stories to tell.

The tiny town in rural France that almost brought down the German government lies ahead of us. As does a valley outside Dsseldorf that gave us a word that altered our perception of human history. Well find out why a tiny Swedish mining town now finds itself honoured alongside the likes of Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, and what the people of fifty of the worlds nations owe to a tiny spa town on the CzechGerman border. The story of how a village in South Africa gave us a word for a tactical demotion makes our list, as does the Jordanian mountain whose name has become a byword for a tantalising glimpse. And well find out what the Philippines has given to your office in-tray, what Alaska has given to your liquor cabinet, and how a speech given by a bumbling North Carolinian gave us a word for impenetrable nonsense.

But every journey, as the old saying goes, starts with a single step. And ours starts with a step along a long-forgotten street in the south of London...

Actually, the name London is something of an etymological mystery, and this theory proposed in 1998 by Professor Richard Coates, then President of the English Place-Name Society is just one of a number of possible explanations.

If not a Celtic word referring to the relative uncrossability of the Thames, London might be a Welsh-origin name meaning something like lake fortress. Or else it could derive from the name of the Roman goddess of the moon, Luna.

Or perhaps, as another theory claims, it takes its name from an old Celtic warrior, whose supposed name, Londino, might have meant something like fierce or wild? Or maybe, as the twelfth-century historian Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed, the name derives from Lud Silver-Hand a king from Welsh folklore, who is said to have saved Wales both from a plague of dragons, and from a magical giant who had the power to send people to sleep by playing music; to escape the giants soporific tunes, Geoffrey explained, Lud dipped his head in a bucket of water. (On second thoughts, that last theory isnt quite as reliable as the others...)

Actually, it literally means two days after Saturday.

Funa is a feminine-forming suffix in the native Tuvaluan language, while futi literally means banana. The name Funafuti banana woman is said to have originally belonged to one of the two wives of Telematua, the ancestral founder of the Tuvaluan nation, who supposedly named the town in her honour.

B ags packed? Passport ready? Good, because well be making no fewer than eighty stops on this etymological trip around the world. And following the route of another literary circumnavigation, were beginning this journey in London.

But while Phileas Foggs eighty-day voyage began in the lavish surroundings of the Reform Club, were starting off in well, a less grandiose setting. A poverty-stricken street in eighteenth-century Southwark, to be exact.

Places all across London have provided inspiration for countless words and phrases over the centuries, from an Aldgate draught, a punning name for a bad cheque (so called as Aldgate was once home to a well-used water pump) to a