Placenames in London.
History and legend reside in placenames.1. Start with Hammersmith and Fulham: These constitute a Borough in London that borders on Kensington, and Shepherd's Bush. One derivation of the name is Saxon, descriptive as Ham-hythe, a town - harbor. Another is legendary: Two giantesses constructing the nearly identical churches at Fulham and Putney eased their tasks by tossing a huge hammer across the river one to the other, Put-it-nigh! Full home! They shared it well until the claws broke. They took their hammer to the smith, thus....
Charles Dickens cites these etymological roots in his weekly journal, shown here at All the Year Round, Vols 3-4 (August 4, 1860); and focusing first at p.391. There he suggests the name derivation as Saxon, town with a creek or harbor.
Muse:
Hurl to hit. Misdate
Misstate Miss. Date Sixty-One
Home haven updates.
Tomorrow. Fifty.
Hoerled. Entitlement hammers
Sport-smithed. Dickens. Call.
Do dates matter. Is verification important. No. Events happen and the date comes and goes in significance. Nonetheless, in Europe, our sequence for dates as month-day-year is instead day-month-year. November 21, 1961, is 21 November 1961. Date-writing is important for statutes of limitation in foreign cases, as a wrong entry loses the lot. Special dates and films, other important items to England -look up England chronology items at http://www.johnowensmith.co.uk/histdate/.
2. Westminster. West Monastery. See London place names at http://www.krysstal.com/londname .
3. Elephant and Castle? A 1760 pub - castle meant the "howdah" on top of the elephant for riding, http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ele1.
4. People's names - Tekle Gerenas I met. Then a more usually named, but never forgotten, fine fellow, Robert Howard. A new school unsought. See http://www.newschool.edu/about.
