The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between - Patrick Foote

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new. In fact, the city as we know it today was “created” in 1873. That’s less than two hundred years ago! Yet parts of it are much older, like the aforementioned zoo. The zoo opened in 1865, eight years before the city was formed. How is Budapest Zoo older than Budapest? And of course, where did the name Budapest come from?

      The name Budapest, and in fact the city itself, comes from the fact that originally Budapest was three smaller cities that came together to form one city. These three cities were called Buda, Óbuda (which simply means Old Buda) and Pest. And when these cities came together to become one, instead of creating a whole new name for the city, they simply put Buda and Pest together to form the name. Though at one point, Pestbuda was considered, which…doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely.

      “Óbuda” is very much part of Buda, hence, why it didn’t get a clearer reference in the city’s name (Óbudabudapest doesn’t sound as nice). So, let’s look more closely at the former cities of Buda and Pest. The Danube river runs through the center of Budapest. To the west of the river lies Buda, and to the east of the river lies Pest. While they are now one city, Buda and Pest still pride themselves on their unique identities. Buda is home to some of the city’s more historic landmarks, beautiful hills and nature, and more peace and quiet. Pest on the other hand is much more modern, bustling, and is the hub of the city’s nightlife.

      So, we know about Buda and Pest, and we know that the name Budapest simply comes from putting Buda and Pest together, so (if you haven’t guessed by now what I am going to say have you even been reading?), where do the names Buda and Pest come from? The origins of both these names aren’t clear to us. Buda is thought to have been someone’s actual name (perhaps someone who was of importance in the city’s ancient history) while Pest is thought to come from what Greek writer Ptolemy called the city in his writings, Pession.

      While we may not know where the names of Buda and Pest came from, we know for sure where the name Budapest came from! And really isn’t that what we are here for?

      LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH

      Nope, I didn’t fall asleep on my keyboard. Llanfair-pwllgwyngyll-gogery-chwyrn-drobwll-llan-tysilio-gogo-goch is the longest place name for a human settlement on Earth, the only place name longer is a hill in New Zealand called Taumatawhakatangi-hangakoauauotamatea-turipukakapikimaunga-horonukupokaiwhen-uakitanatahu. I choose to talk about Llanfair-pwllgwyngyll-gogery-chwyrn-drobwll-llan-tysilio-gogo-goch here in the book as opposed to the YouTube channel so that I wouldn’t have to pronounce it. That’s something I’ll leave up to you.

      The village of Llanfairpwll is in Wales, which explains to us the complexity of the village’s name as the country is also home to the villages of Ysbyty Ystwyth and Plwmp. While these might look alien to an English speaker, you must remember that in Welsh W and Y are vowels. The name of Llanfair-pwllgwyngyll-gogery-chwyrn-drobwll-llan-tysilio-gogo-goch is of course in Welsh, and that name actually translates into English rather neatly as “Saint Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of Saint Tysilio of the red cave.”

      What’s interesting about this ridiculously long name is that it isn’t a relic of an ancient past that has persisted in modern times. Not only was this not always the village’s name, but the village’s people went out of their way to deliberately give it a long, silly name in the nineteenth century! Initially called just “Llanfairpwll,” clever marketing gurus of the 1880s decided to add a crazy amount of extra letters to the end of its name to attract more tourists and attention to the village. It evidently has worked since we wouldn’t be talking about the village today if it weren’t for their outrageous name!

      From a ridiculously long name to an adorably short name, we have Å, a village in Norway. There are actually a couple villages in Norway called Å, as the name simply comes from the Old Norse word “small river”; however, the most popular one is near the south tip of one of the Lofoten islands. This is this Å that get the most visits during the summer months and the one with the comical “Å” sign as you come into the village. Unsurprisingly, this sign has been stolen a fair few times.

      Is there anything humans love doing more than having a good stare at things? I know that I have spent a good while mindlessly staring at pretty useless things and felt sufficiently satisfied. So you can only imagine how long I have spent staring at amazing things! Sometimes something is so amazing to gawk at that people from all over the world come to stare at it, touch it, take photos with it, and buy tacky souvenirs. These are also known as the landmarks of the world. Some are formed by nature, and some are formed by the hands of humans, but all (well at least the ones in this book) have interesting names.

      THE EIFFEL TOWER

      The Eiffel Tower certainly is an eyeful (I’m so sorry), but how did it get its name? The Eiffel Tower came into existence to be the centerpiece of the Exposition Universelle which means “World’s Fair.” This World’s Fair was to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution and over 100 artists submitted plans for what should go on the Champ-de-Mars in central Paris. The winning plan belonged to the construction and consultation firm Eiffel et Compagnie which was run by acclaimed architect Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel.

      Eiffel (the man, not the building) had been building and designing structures and bridges for some time before his tower in Paris. This included the Budapest-Nyugati Railway Terminal in Hungary in 1877, the Garabit Viaduct in France in 1884, and the Statue of Liberty, gifted to the USA in 1878. Yet it was his tower in the center of Paris that he gave his own name to in 1889. This lead to the name we all know today, the Eiffel Tower.

      Gustav only constructed the Statue of Liberty but designed and constructed the Eiffel Tower. Still, having involvement in the two most iconic landmarks on Earth isn’t too shabby is it? Millions come to Paris every year to see the Eiffel Tower. It’s loved by many, but to others, not so much. Perhaps the most famous example of someone who despised it was the writer Guy de Maupassant. He allegedly hated the sight of the tower so much he often ate lunch underneath it, as it was the only place in Paris where it couldn’t be seen. Logical.

      BIG BEN

      Have you ever stopped and thought for a minute just what a ridiculous name Big Ben is? It’s the kind of name you’d call a prize winning bull or something. Yet the name Big Ben belongs to the most iconic landmark in the United Kingdom!

      But what exactly am I talking about when I say Big Ben? Well, if you’re thinking of the whole tower with the clock face on it, then you are wrong. This is a commonly known thing here in the UK, but I shall explain for the unfamiliar. Big Ben is the name for the biggest bell that rings along with the corresponding time of day. The actual tower that houses Big Ben did not have an official name when it was first built in 1844. From 1844 until 2012, the tower was simply called the Clock Tower. Yet in 2012 an official title was given to it, Elizabeth Tower, to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

      So now that we’ve cleared up the whole Big Ben bell-not-building debacle, we can look into the name itself. There’s a couple ideas as to how the bell got that silly name. One is that it was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, Welsh civil engineer and politician. He was a large, well beloved man in the Houses of Parliament, playing a big role in the construction and installation of the bell itself. It makes a lot of sense for the bell to be named after him, but there’s another idea that it was named after popular English boxing champion of the time, Ben Caunt, who was also nicknamed Big Ben.

      Whether it was named after a politician or a boxer, Big Ben is the name that has stood the test of time. It’s a rather silly name, from a rather silly country.

      MOUNT RUSHMORE

      I was going to talk about the Statue of Liberty, but we kind of covered it with the Eiffel Tower and its name isn’t that interesting—it’s a statue…of

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