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

I was born in the City of the Flow­land Peo­ple, made my way to Stink Onion upon reach­ing matu­ri­ty, then onward to New Yew Tree Vil­lage where I have lived for the last 217 moons.

Look up some of your key co-ordi­nates in The Atlas of True Names and you too can have a per­son­al his­to­ry as myth­ic-sound­ing as mine. The maps—for the UK, USA, Cana­da, and World—replace mod­ern geo­graph­i­cal names with the orig­i­nal ety­mo­log­i­cal roots of cities, coun­tries, and bod­ies of water, trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. Their web­site picks the “Sahara desert” to illus­trate the true name selec­tion process. Their cho­sen label “The Tawny One” has its basis in es-sahra, trans­lat­ed from the Ara­bic as “the fawn col­ored desert”. It would be inter­est­ing to learn how many pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tors lent a hand with the ety­mo­log­i­cal pars­ing. There are a lot of lan­guages in this world and we all know the hav­oc Google Trans­late can wreak.

Mar­ried car­tog­ra­phers (and Lord of the Rings fans) Stephan Hormes and Silke Peust acknowl­edge that there could be alter­nates to their trans­la­tions. This should come as a relief to the civic boost­ers of Philadel­phia. Quib­blers will no doubt enjoy tak­ing issue with Hormes and Peust’s choic­es. Hope­ful­ly, any result­ing inter­net brawls will take place on a higher—and dustier—plateau than those where vul­tures pick hap­less celebri­ties to shreds.

Order one of these maps and pack it along on your sum­mer road trip. Even if younger fam­i­ly mem­bers can’t be both­ered to learn how to nav­i­gate with­out a phone, the nar­ra­tive­ly rich names are sure to leav­en those long hours in the car. (How bad­ly do you have to go, Jason? Can you hold out until Table or should Dad­dy pull over in the Val­ley of the Dark­land Dweller?) 

It’s liv­ing his­to­ry in trav­el ver­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Down­load Eight Free Lec­tures on The Hob­bit by “The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor,” Corey Olsen

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books includ­ing the increas­ing­ly obso­lete Zinester’s Guide to NYC and No Touch Mon­key! and Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHallliday