[Magdalen] the sound of words

[Scott Knitter]

I like that one.

When I was job-hunting, mainly for teaching jobs, it was interesting
to get to know a bit about the various towns I visited. In one or two
of them, there seemed to be an oft-used and very odd (to me) name that
was attached to most things in the town, and I seriously doubted
whether I could live there because of that. Never mind that I'd
probably get used to it and had lived in places with names that
probably sounded very normal to me but disconcertingly odd to others.

One was Columbus, Ohio, with its Olentangy (river and other stuff).
Middletown, Ohio, had a strange name, too, that I don't recall, but I
do recall the interviewing principal's pride in his strict
corporal-punishment policy. No thanks.

Berrien Springs, Mich., and environs has a lot of things called
Pokagon, which I mispronounced as POKE-a-gon as though it were some
sort of geometric shape. It's po-CAG-un.

One that we take for granted in Chicago but our Roger+ hadn't heard
before is Wabash...think of a gala for the Brideshead Revisited
author: it's an Evelyn Waugh bash. <d&r>


On Sat, Aug 8, 2015 at 3:57 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford
<oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> The stream that passes through my birthplace is Connoquennessing Creek.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connoquenessing,_Pennsylvania
>
> Lots of places around there had that name.  It means, I am told, "A long
> way straight."
>
> kon eh kweh NESS ing




-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA