> Tintern, in the Wye Valley, Monmouthshire

There's also plenty of "upon the"s and "x-in-y" (ie: Henly-in-Arden). Not just the England but seems just as common in Scotland, or even more common.

I can imagine the early computer systems of the postal organization having to deal with these quirks.

[1] apparently "weird" is being taken as bad or something. I like weird.

These are common in many languages.

Even in England: Weston-super-Mare is just latin for "Weston by (literally "over") the sea".

And constructs like "Stratford-upon-Avon" (to disambiguate from other Stratfords) are pretty common in most places; consider "Frankfurt am Main" and "Frankfurt an der Oder" all of which specify that their town is the one on this specific river.

Also a lot of those European place names (ignoring the prepositional affixes) are themselves compounds of other nice properties.

I don't know why this construct is uncommon in the USA.

Yup. There are plenty of them in Italy, we don't use dashes but there are various towns with generic prefixes and suffixes. Reggio Emilia and Reggio Calabria were just "regium", Latin for region or town, and at some point they gained the extra name (which refers to the wider area) to differentiate them. Near my hometown we have Casalecchio di Reno, which means "bunch of houses over the river Reno"; there are loads of river-denominated towns all over Italy. And there are loads of "Castello Something", since castello means castle or castrum - as you might imagine, there are quite a few of those across the country.

It might also simply not be needed as a matter of practicality. There are many Springfields, but probably not very many per state (although I know New Jersey has two) and certainly a max of one per zipcode. Sure Springfield, MA 12345 isn't as whimsical as Springfield-upon-the-Connecticut (or whatever) in terms of distinguishing it from Springfield, NJ 08765, but it gets the job done.

A whole lot of those “New” places (unsurprisingly, given patterns of human habitation more generally) have rivers nearby.

> There's Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA.

And Cardiff by the Sea, Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Corona del Mar, CA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buda,_Texas

In the US we use a comma. Buffalo, NY - as opposed to Buffalo in any other state. (MN, TX, and WI each have a city of buffalo - perhaps more, that is where I stopped searching). States in the US tend to be very careful about not allowing duplication of names so this is enough for the most part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_(toponym)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_(G.I._Joe)

True, although if you include unincorporated towns, there are a lot of naming conflicts, at least in my home state of Indiana.

Marion, for example, is the name of a small city an hour from Marion County, the central county that encompasses Indianapolis, and also the name of a small unincorporated community an hour in a different direction.

Plus Marian University is in Marion County, not Marion the city, although unlike Harvard, MA vs Harvard University, I doubt that causes much confusion.

Miami . . . and Miami, Ohio.

In north Florida there's Howey-in-the-Hills.

And in Texas, Cut-n-Shoot.

Like they say "Come on vacation, leave on probation!"

I found it quite amusing.

There's also Pasadena . . . and Pasadena, Texas.

That's very weird but even to me omitting the article and preposition sounds wrong. By the way «to the» is contracted from the long for «zu der» to «zur».

Compared to «Frankfurt am Main» there's no specification of a river or something else. It's just the location name where the article and preposition is often required.

In English this rarely survives except for odd cases such as The City of London (which is a small, legally distinct entity from what most people refer to as London). English is happy to drop articles when they don't reduce ambiguity, hence countries (Austria, Scotland, but retained in the descriptive name The United States of America) or Bend, Oregon (a case similar to Lenk).

Does it? "Upon the sea" would be 海上, not 上海. 上海 would have 上 as a verb, something more like "get onto the sea".

上 preceding the name might also be interpreted as "upper", as in 上卷 "Volume 1 (of 2)" / 下卷 "Volume 2 (of 2)". Is there a paired 下海 attested somewhere?

(Chinese place names involving some kind of spatial relationship are extremely common. But note that they all use normal grammar: 关中 "within (中) the pass (关)" / 关外 "outside (外) the pass"; 山西 "west (西) of the mountain (山) / 山东 "east (东) of the mountain"; 湖北 "north (北) of the lake (湖) / 湖南 "south (南) of the lake"; etc. etc. etc. etc.)

Just like [noun modifier] is no longer standard English, but we do keep phrases with that ordering from Middle English (e.g. Surgeon General)

That's not from Middle English, it's from French.

Middle English was closer to French than modern English in many ways-English monarchs still spent time in Normandy and claimed the French crown for generations after William the Conqueror.

e.g. 孟子 1A/3 河內凶，則移其民於河東，移其粟於河內 (strongly suggesting that the current naming practices were also current 2200 years ago); 庄子 秋水 13 我知之濠上也 (ordinary positioning).

So my mother-in-law just said '上海不在海上', i.e. 海上 is closer to the literal meaning of 'on top of the ocean (physically)', which the city is not.

Perhaps 上 here acts as a verb or gerund ((going up / on the way) to the ocean)? 下海 means 'going (down) to the ocean'.

The rabbit hole here can get deep (and thanks for drawing me in!), this book [2] goes in-depth about how word class and word order influenced one another as Chinese developed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese_grammar#Word...

[2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/r9WO6g5mqi8C?hl=en&gb...

This is possible, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the normal way to express that is 下海. The ocean is pretty much by definition both "down"stream and downhill of everything; approaching the ocean by going up is semantically unnatural. My guess above of "get onto the ocean" (i.e. "set sail") was drawing a parallel to 上路 "get on the road" / "start traveling".

> 海上 is closer to the literal meaning of 'on top of the ocean (physically)', which the city is not.

I don't see this as a huge obstacle; "upon the sea" has the same literal meaning but isn't surprising in an English place name, though "by the sea", with the correct literal meaning, isn't surprising either.

Some good place names in Shropshire, too, but Durham has my favourite with No Place and Pity Me.

The Wallops (Nether Wallop, Middle Wallop, and Over Wallop) are good too

And then over in Northumberland there's Once Brewed, Twice Brewed, Snodgrass.

Monmouth is at the mouth of the river Monnow, a tributary of the Wye.

Where do Monnow and Tintern come from?

The River Monnow derives its name from the Welsh (Cymraeg, Myn-wy) and translates to "swift water". (myn means swift, and wy is one of the many Welsh words for water).

The name Tintern may derive from the Welsh din + d/teyrn, meaning "rocks of the king".

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintern_Abbey

Edited to add - Nice set of photos at the bottom of this page:

https://medievalheritage.eu/en/main-page/heritage/wales/tint...

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45527/lines-composed-...

On looking up the link for the above I learned it also shares an exclamation mark with the incredible Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! [2] in Quebec.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westward_Ho! [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Louis-du-Ha!_Ha!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01qjjgw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe

I have to say that one of the small joys of doing geography A-level in England was finding the silly names on the detailed Ordnance Survey maps. There was always one or two that enlivened the dullest lessons on geomorphology, road networks, etc. I still find a lot of humour in these placenames. Exhibit A: Piddletrenthide [1] is one close to me, quite close to Tolpuddle. It's my belief from local knowledge that Piddletrenthide is pronounced with two hard 't's, i.e. Piddle - Trent - Hide. Perhaps if there are HN'ers from Piddletrenthide here, they can correct me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy_of_England#English

[1] https://www.visit-dorset.com/explore/piddletrenthide-and-pid...

https://brilliantmaps.com/weird-place-names-uk/

https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/news/a7051/weirdest...

https://www.google.com/search?q=strangest+town+name&tbm=isch

It seems they were more likely to stick to singular words here in NA when naming regions. So it's interesting to me? Is that taboo or something?

It's being described as "in the Wye Valley", but that's not part of the name.

If it was common here in Canada then I wouldn't find it 'weird' or unusual would I? And I can assure you it's not very common. Even if there are exceptions.

Regardless that was not what the Brits (or whichever Euro empire) chose to eventually name Milwaukee, they chose Milwaukee. So that's a poor counterpoint...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintern_Abbey

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlewood

Favourite place name near here? Nempnett Thrubwell. Or Chew Magna. Great names.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogou

Pretty fascinating the sheer number of different types of mediaeval tunnels across Europe and their presumed uses

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45527/lines-composed-...

[1] http://trove4j.sourceforge.net/javadocs/gnu/trove/map/TIntIn...

You can load the page then go to airplane mode.

I guess an aqueduct makes the most sense.

If you look around modern news sites, you'll notice that everyone does it now.