Wednesday 9 October 2019

Pity Me...


...is a village just off the main road between Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham City.

5 comments:

ted said...

A whole town devoted to victimization. Hmm, seems like we need to move some social justice folks over there :).

dearieme said...

Pictish place names often start with "Pit".

But then there are people who think Thanet, in Kent, is a Phoenician place name.

a_probst said...

There's a town in New Mexico called Truth or Consequences. But it was named after a game show as a publicity stunt. Seems to have worked. Amongst many references to it in pop culture, a scene in a 2015 Doctor Who episode was set there.

Mister Quigg said...

petit mere, little sea

Bruce Charlton said...

My understanding is that the origin of the name Pity Me is not known, which makes the name even more evocative - and (so Tolkien warns us!) with English place names, it is seldom possible to be confident about etymology unless there is a lineage of actual historical evidence.

But, as a rule, the original sound of the place name (if that can be inferred), rather than the spelling, is the best guide to its original meaning - even nowadays, locals tend to preserve pronunciation in face of mis-spellings by officials from outside.

For example, the Northumbrian mining village Cambois (apparently mis-spelled by a pretentious mapmaker, or the like) is still pronounced Cammus by the locals, which is a better guide to its inferred etymology than the spelling, which implies a Frech pronunciation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambois .