Snape Farm

[vilakins]

One of the people at work uses cut-up old maps of the UK as note paper, writing on the back of them. They're very detailed and I always have a good look at them, savouring the wonderful names. The farms on this one include Loves, Boxalland, Gownfold, Battlehurst, Crawfold, Cold Harbour, lots of other folds including Bennyfold, Blackbrook, Northwood, Stablebarn, Mulsey... and Snape. :-D Snape Farm! Sorry, HP fans, I'm not sure where this is, but there's a Kirdford and Wisborough Green, and the B2133 runs through the top right corner, and the A283 through the bottom left.

I wish our place names had some poetry to them.

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Sounds like West Sussex (http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=504600&y=125400&z=5&sv=504600,125400&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf&dn=523&ax=504600&ay=125400). Close up of Snape Farm here (http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=505500&y=122500&z=3&sv=505500,122500&st=4&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf&ax=505500&ay=122500) (clicking on the minus sign at the bottom will move you up to the first map, covering more ground at a smaller scale).

But don't you have lots of lovely Maori names?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's it!

We have heaps but unless you speak it (as my father did, delighting us as kids with translations) you don't know the meanings and the poetry. I can translate some names with common elements to get 'burned skirt', 'lazy beach', 'hot hot oven', 'big or small lake', and my favourite, 'dog turd river', but some tell a story. Our UK-based names are dead (literally) boring: generals, admirals, and assorted aristos.

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

No industrial areas, just to leaven the loaf? (Says she who is sitting in an area absolutely littered with northern English placenames, named after coal mines that were named after the places in northern England.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Hardly any that I know of, ee ba gum.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Yes, West Sussex it is. I live in Cranleigh, visible at the northern edge of that map. (But I'd never heard of any of those farms.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That makes two of you who live in that area! What a coincidence. :-)

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

It's a small world, :) I wonder who the other one is.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

She's in the comments. :-)

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

So she is. :) Looking at her Userinfo, it looks as though she's located about thirty miles from me - much to her relief, no doubt. :)

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it is very tempting to go and find some Czech names and try to translate them literally, hahaha, I will have to do it but not now, sorry, my duty calls and calls hectically...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's you!

Did you read the opening scene of my B7 story in the style of Swallows and Amazons? I'm having so much fun writing it!

[gair.livejournal.com]

OMG I would go to their farmers' markets!!!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ah, but would you buy Snape Farm preserves?

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

close to me, very close to my mother :0)

I've got some writing paper and envelopes made from recycled maps

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool! {To both.)

I seem to remember you papered your hall with maps.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

You have the same problem with the wonderful sounding Maurie names that I have with Welsh. I know the basics tre- homestead, pont=bridge etc but I don't know enough to translate the music of the name just the bare bones of it.
At least with local names I do know the legends about them, roe instance MynyddIslwyn means Go below the bush and the legend takes at least a page to tell properly.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yep, pretty much. I did study some Maori a few years ago but I never got to my father's standard.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Snape Farm! Hee...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Perhaps his family's ancestral estate. :-)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I just heard JKR got it from a map, and perhaps it was this one!

[glittermouse.livejournal.com]

JKR is meant to have got the name Snape from a map, so perhaps it was that exact place!

I love Maori names and will happily read Ngaio Marsh and Keri Hulme's books over and over to see the beautiful words like whare and pohutacawas! ( I hope I spelled those right.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ha! Maybe it was, in which case it's a huge coincidence that it was on the note I got today.

'Whare' is right, and it's 'pohutukawa', a favourite tree of mine (see my summer icon). Another is the nikau palm, because I love palms and the name sounds almost exactly like mine. :-)