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Kids' Hangout
Budding Geographers
Q: What's a good hangout name for kids?
A: Hmmm ... sorry, "Kids' Hangout" is taken.
This is a chance to talk about a branch of
geography called toponymy.
Topo- is the land, sort of, and -nymy has to do with naming stuff.
Some place names have geographic origins. Ecuador
is on the equator, as is Equatorial Guinea.
Norway is northern, and Montana is mountainous. Bombay in India was
named
for its spacious harbour, which protected ships from storms (in
Portuguese, “bom” means kind or merciful).
There are some really unoriginal names. Two
states in Australia are called Western Australia and South Australia.
How imaginative is that? And in the U.S., 35 states have a city
called Springfield.
But there are also some one-of-a-kind place names,
like
Punkeydoodles Corners in Ontario, Canada. And Head Smashed In Buffalo
Jump, in Alberta, Canada. New Zealand claims the longest place name:
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
So what do you want to call your hangout? You'll
want to give it a distinctive
name. What sort of person are you? What are your
interests? What's your favorite part of the world? Blend them together
somehow.
A couple of examples:
- If you're Italian, and you're into IT
(information technology—who isn't these days?) you could pull a J K
Rowling trick and call it IT Alley—as is It-aly, get it?
- Back in the 1960s, a hangout was called a
pad. As in: “How about we go over to my pad?” (The word “cool,”
meaning likeable, was also coined in that era). Put that into your name
and you'll get a chuckle out of your parents.
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