The Atlas of True Names Restores Modern Cities to Their Middle Earth-ish Roots

Ety­mol­o­gy, (OGr. ety­mon “true sense” and logos “speech, ora­tion, dis­course, word”) is the study of the ori­gin and his­to­ry of words. For the first time, the Atlas of True Names uses ety­mol­o­gy to give us an unusu­al insight into famil­iar geo­graph­i­cal names – with intrigu­ing results.….. Once the names have been tak­en back to their roots and trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish, it is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent that our world has an extra­or­di­nary affin­i­ty with Mid­dle Earth, the myth­i­cal con­ti­nent where the events of Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ are played out. Mid­dle Earth’s evoca­tive “Midge­wa­ter”, “Dead Marsh­es” and “Mount Doom” are strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar in nature to Europe’s “Swirl­wa­ter”, “Dark­ford” or “Smoky Bay”, as revealed by the Atlas of True Names. Many geo­graph­i­cal names are clear­ly root­ed in Man’s obser­va­tion of his nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment; the phys­i­cal loca­tion of a set­tle­ment: “At the Foot of the Moun­tain” – Pied­mont, the char­ac­ter of an impor­tant water course: “The Gen­tle One” – The Seine or even just the local veg­e­ta­tion: “Under the Oaks” – Pots­dam. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, coun­tries and land­scapes often derive their names from the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the peo­ple who lived there: “Great Land of the Tat­tooed” – Great Britain, whilst local mythol­o­gy and region­al rulers also fre­quent­ly leave their lega­cy: “Isle of the Monster’s Eye” – Pele­pon­nese or “Illus­tri­ous Emper­or” – Zaragoza. Some­times, it is impos­si­ble to deny the force of the Roman proverb ‘nomen est omen’. For instance Grozny — the Chech­nyan cap­i­tal which, over the last years, has been destroyed in so many wars, – trans­lates as “The Fear­some”. The Atlas of True Names restores an ele­ment of enchant­ment to the world we all think we know so well. It takes the read­er on a jour­ney into the unknown – a unique explo­ration of unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry in that famil­iar place we all know as ‘home’. Take a look at the world through fresh eyes!