Torpenhow Hill
Encyclopedia
Torpenhow Hill is an alleged hill, whose main claim to fame is that its name is supposed to be a quadruple tautology
: "Tor", "pen", and "how" are all said to mean "hill" in different languages (Old English
, Welsh
, and Danish
, respectively), so that a literal translation of "Torpenhow Hill" would be "Hillhillhill Hill". It is assumed that successive residents of the area took the previous residents' name for the hill and added their own.
However, it is unlikely this is true. First, while there is a village in Cumbria called Torpenhow, there does not appear to be any hill by that name in England; if there is a hill by that name near the village, it would appear to be a nonce name
after the village, not a long-standing name passed down from language to language. There are also various proposals for the meanings of the elements of the name, none of which are exactly "hill": Tor may be from British torr "peak", a word used in English to this day as tor, and pen from British penn "head", so Torpen may have been a British compound name, "head peak". The how, with historic variant spellings oc (Torpenoc) and oh (Torpenoh), appears to be Dano-English how(e), hough "hillock, tumulus", so that Torpenhow would mean "Headpeak hillock".
The local pronunciation of Torpenhow Village is trəˈpɛnə, though the more intuitive pronunciation /ˈtɔrpənhaʊ/ is also used.
Tautology (rhetoric)
Tautology is an unnecessary or unessential repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing...
: "Tor", "pen", and "how" are all said to mean "hill" in different languages (Old English
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
, Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, and Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, respectively), so that a literal translation of "Torpenhow Hill" would be "Hillhillhill Hill". It is assumed that successive residents of the area took the previous residents' name for the hill and added their own.
However, it is unlikely this is true. First, while there is a village in Cumbria called Torpenhow, there does not appear to be any hill by that name in England; if there is a hill by that name near the village, it would appear to be a nonce name
Nonce word
A nonce word is a word used only "for the nonce"—to meet a need that is not expected to recur. Quark, for example, was formerly a nonce word in English, appearing only in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Murray Gell-Mann then adopted it to name a new class of subatomic particle...
after the village, not a long-standing name passed down from language to language. There are also various proposals for the meanings of the elements of the name, none of which are exactly "hill": Tor may be from British torr "peak", a word used in English to this day as tor, and pen from British penn "head", so Torpen may have been a British compound name, "head peak". The how, with historic variant spellings oc (Torpenoc) and oh (Torpenoh), appears to be Dano-English how(e), hough "hillock, tumulus", so that Torpenhow would mean "Headpeak hillock".
The local pronunciation of Torpenhow Village is trəˈpɛnə, though the more intuitive pronunciation /ˈtɔrpənhaʊ/ is also used.
See also
- Blennerhasset and TorpenhowBlennerhasset and TorpenhowBlennerhasset and Torpenhow is a civil parish in the Allerdale district of Cumbria, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 437. It includes the villages of Blennerhasset and Torpenhow ....
- List of tautological place names
- Cumbrian placename etymology