Quite surprised you didn’t mention the Sahara Desert, which is probably the biggest place with a tautological name. Being that “sahara” means desert in Arabic, the name means Desert Desert.
The Sahara is what jumped to mind the second I saw this video in my feed! It’s the main one I usually see cited all around the internet as an example of a tautological name.
I'm guessing "shifu" comes from the English word "chef"? Because "master chef", at least in its complete sense, makes sense, in actual English. In Chinese, I guess not.
@@SirThanksalot_1 Interesting connection, although to keep the records straight there's little chance these are related like that. In Chinese we often have words formed from repeating characters with essentially the same meaning. On their own the characters 師 and 傅 both have a meaning of "master/ teacher/ scholar". Put them together then you form the word for "master".
@@Ong.s_Jukebox no , the DC in Dc comics doesn't stand for anything , people just assume it stand for dc comics because they had a series called decective comics
I will asume that you understand danish, and share a couple of word plays i have concocted: "Kriminalforbryder", og "Yderligt-Gående Radikal-Ekstremist" I just regret that they don't translate well into english.
Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. All of these are rivers.
@@thematthew761 But how many of those names actuality mean 'river'? A lot of US states are named after the people that originally lived there, but it'd be interesting to know why those people called themselves those things. I'm sure they're not all river people. And why didn't the British come up with a more original name than Georgia for that state, given there was already a country with that name?
Acronyms as names, I feel like have a different purpose and actually kinda make sense. Because acronyms often tend to become words themselves and can develop their own definitions. VIP is becoming an adjective that can describe the person, or can describe a place that the person goes to (VIP Lounge) and so sometimes adding the word "Person" might be necessary for clarity, it's still shorter than "very important person" so it fulfills the desire for an acronym and it sounds less awkward than saying "V I person" This is different than "chai tea" which means "tea tea" and is longer than just saying "chai" or "tea"
I've always been led to believe that many tautological names come from a simple misunderstand and miscommunication when 2 languages meet. you simply have one person asking for the name of a specific landmark and the second person interpretting that as them asking for the generic name for that kind of landmark int heir language..
It's more that before communities were as interconnected as they are today many people would only know of one River/hill/whatever near them, or at least only often need to refer to one, and so they'd just call it the river, without needing a specific name for it. So it is when languages meet, but it's not from confusion about what the newcomers are asking
The country of Poland is technically tautological. It comes from the Polish word "pole" (pronounced poleh) and means field or land. So in English, it means Land Land
I'd argue that they are less dumb and more straightforward. E.g. in German Spongebob's full name is "Spongebob Schwammkopf", which literally translates to "Spongebob Spongehead".
Spongebob Squarepants in Polish is "Spongebob Kanciastoporty". Kanciasty = angular Porty = pants/trousers So Angular-Pants or Angular-Trousers. Which makes the Polish name more accurate to the original English name. Poland for the win over Germany.
You could put that as a hypothesis. As for the first part, Portu-, there's no doubt it mean port, but as for -gal, it's harder to say. Some suggest it comes from Gallaeci, the Celtic tribe that inhabited what's modern day Galicia in Spain, therefore its name. Some other people think it comes from "calidus", which means warm. There's also the hypothesis that it comes from Gaia, as in the Greek name of the godess, this is because when it used to be a small settlement (the modern city of Porto or Oporto, used to be called Portugal), and it was divided into two towns Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia ( it seems that at times they were called separatedly as Porto Cale, and Vila Nova de Gaia which would bring down this theory, but i can't tell if Porto Cale comes after or before the union of both places with the info i got. And if you ask me I believe that this Gaia comes from the same place thar Galicia, but it got confused with the godess). If it indeed comes from Gallaeci, the etymology gets wierd cause the many names Celtic tribes have had may or may not have the same origin, but it most likely means something like wood or hill.
Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. These are states named after rivers and those rivers are tautological.
In Norway we have a place called Nesodden (a bit south of Oslo), on Nesodden we have a settlement called Nesoddtangen. Nes is used a lot in Norwegian place names, it means a sharp and thin piece of land that juts out in to a lake or sea. Odd/odde means a piece of land shaped like a tongue that juts into a lake or sea, it can also mean the outermost point in a nes. Well, tangen means a sharp edge (on a tool) OR a small sharp piece of land that juts out in to a lake or sea. So in Norway we have a place called thin sharp piece of land that juts into water thrice, without English, or any invasion ! More poetically in English it could be called Peninsula-peninsula-peninsula. Why so many words for lands jutting into seas or lakes you ask? Have you seen the coast of Norway?
My favorite example is fictional. In Pixar's "Brave", much of the story takes place in Castle DunBroch. "Dun" and "broch" are types of castle. So, they're living in Castle Castlecastle.
Wangi Wangi - is pronounced with the same sort of g as in George - also it’s more of an o than an a - so Won-gee. Like many indigenous names it’s actually a plural - Wangi is the Awabikal word for water, so Wangi Wangi means lots of water. Like Wagga (also in NSW) which is the Wirajiri word for crow - so Wagga Wagga (it’s full name) means ‘many crows’ - also locals (and most Australians) rarely ever use both names. it’s just Wangi or Wagga. Also it’s pronounced Teemor not Tymore
9:05 The "me" or "mae" actually means "mother" in Thai, not "river". The northern Thai usually prefixes rivers or mountains with this word. Interestingly, the main river that flows through Bangkok, "Chao Phraya" river, used to be called "Mae Nam" or "Menam" river in old European maps. The word "Mae Nam" literally translates to "river" ("mae" is "mother" and "nam" is "water").
I was going to mention this as The La Brea Tar Pits = "the the tar pits tar pits." Another place in California is El Cerrito Hills, which means "the little hills hills". La Brea is better though.
9:10 No, Me in Mekong is not a Thai word for river. Me is pronounced Mae meaning mother. Thai call a river a Mother Water, a Mae Naam with Naam being water.
Meh, you are kinda right, but also wrong. maenaam kong got shortened to maekong because you don´t call rancid mother to rivers out of nothing. You also have to separate the meaning of the word from its roots, mae, is mother, maenaam is river, and naam is water, it doesn't matter if river has the cute name of motherwater it's still river, as a wolf in japanese is still a wolf despite being called greatgod, so if you are talking about the big wolf god, you are forced to say "Ouki na oukami no kami" being tautological in its own language, but you cannot separate the meaning of a compound word, cause now it's a new word, and when it forms new words it will use itself not the roots it's made of, even if it seems so. There's also the dilemma here, is it mae when it means river derived from the same root as mae when it mean mother, or it's just a coincidence that got fixed by adding naam after mae: I mean that the perception of Mother Water may be a folk etymology and the two words used to be different roots that by chance got merged.
If you add town after an Irish "Bally" place name, then it would be tautological because bally comes from the Irish "baile" meaning town. For example, Ballyshannon town, Ballincollig town or Ballymena town. Most Irish place-names are anglicised versions of an Irish name so its easy to see why tautological names are common enough in Ireland. For example Knockboy Mountain means yellow mountain mountain.
A place near where I lived in Cumbria was called Torpenhow hill. In the old local dialect a Tor is a hill, a Pen is a type of hill and a How is... a hill. So it’s called HillHillHill Hill.
My Favorite example is the Rio Grande River which means River Grand River Also I’ve lived by the Outer Bridge my entire life and had no clue it was actually the Outerbrige
i had a lightbulb moment the other day when i noticed that the french words "mou" (soft) and "mouiller" (to get something wet) might come from the same origin
In New Zealand we have a suburb of Auckland (I think, sorry I don't live in Auckland) called "Mount Maunganui" which just means "Mount Big Mountain", not exactly that but I think it's funny.
Mt maunganui is in tauranga, which is about 2.5 hours drive from Auckland. I think tauranga Harbour itself translates to harbour harbour but I'm not sure
I have some places with names like this in my writing. Someone tried to argue that I couldn't give a forest a name that literally meant forest, and I introduced them to several examples of hill hill
In southern Maine USA there is Sebago Lake. Sebago in the local Native American language means, Big Lake. Making "Big Lake Lake" next to that Is Little Sebago Lake, "Little Big Lake Lake"
"Laguna Lake" in the Philippines has the Spanish name of Laguna de Bay which means lake of the bay or bay lake. When the Americans colonized the Philippines, they gave it the English name "Laguna Lake" instead if something that makes sense like "Bay Lake."
Zaire is the Kongo word for river but the country itsdelf was once called Zaire and it's currency was once known as the Zaire. River, country and currency all meant river
I think what comes closest to a tautological name is "Nürnberg", where the first element means "stony rock" and the second means "hill, mountain" - and even then it's not really redundant.
Hey there! As someone from an old town sat right on the Schuylkill, just wanted to let you know that although we spell it "kill" instead of "kil" here in PA, my town at least does simply call it "the Schuylkill," since the name was taught in school and everyone already knows the meaning of its name!
In California, there are a lot of Spanish place names with articles (el, la). In English, people say "the" in front of them, so it's literally "the the (thing)". Ex. The El camino real, the La Serena hotel, the Los Angeles airport (the the Angels airport)...
I mean that one's easy, you could simply translate to "the *{{thing}}* of the *{{Spanish transcription}}* " For example, LAX would be "the hotel of the angels"
If tautological names existed only because of English then they would only go 2 deep at most. A river for example would either have a proper name or just be called river leading to either 'name river' or 'river river' style names, but never 'river river river' and since there are plenty of that last example it's clearly not caused by English influence.
I live by a river in Canada with a tautological name: the Skeena River. "Skeena" is a corruption of a local Indigenous word meaning "misty river", so "Skeena River" fully translated is "misty river river".
This isn’t exactly an official tautological name, but I used to have an inside joke with an old friend because they were trying to learn Latvian and a teacher on youtube said “Christmas eglīte” which is all cool until you realise “Eglīte” means “Christmas tree” so they were saying “Christmas christmas tree”, I pointed this out and it became a common joke to make every so often
My grandparents lived on the Coosa River in rural Alabama. Growing up, I stayed with them for a few weeks every Summer and visited them often as an adult. They just referred to the Coosa River as "The River", since it was the only river in their daily life. I was 25 years old, before I knew the actual name of the river was "Coosa". I had some friends over there, and they asked me the name of the river, and despite me fishing on it for years with my grandfather, I had to look on a map to tell them. Natural curiosity should have prompted me to look it up years earlier, but since I knew it, since I was a baby, before I could remember, I suppose, I just took it for granted?
I just want to say that I'm very impressed that you said Schuylkill almost perfectly. I rarely hear it said correctly by people who aren't from the area. If you're curious, locals pronounce it like "school kill," but the first L is very soft, almost silent, if that makes any sense.
If you do make that double name place name video, I sure hope it includes Walla Walla, which has been a name that has amused me ever since I was a kid sitting next to our USA map at dinner right near the west coast.
I’m a native Floridian and many waterways throughout Florida sport “hatchee” (correct spelling) in its name. As you said, it comes from the Muskogee language and means river. For instance, there’s the Caloosahatchee river in southwest Florida through which water from Lake Okeechobee flows. Interestingly, Okeechobee roughly translates to “big water” (not sure of the native language) so I guess that makes it a tautological name as well.
There's a valley with a tautological place name on the edge of my home town (Hastings, Sussex), the place is Combe Valley ... A combe (/kuːm/; also spelled coombe or coomb and, in place names, comb) can refer either to a steep, narrow valley, or to a small valley or large hollow on the side of a hill; in any case, it is often understood simply to mean a small valley through which a watercourse does not run. So it's called "Valley Valley", and the valley has given it's name to the river running through it now! So now you have the Combe (referring to the area) Combe (referring to the river) Valley (referring to the geography)!
I'd like to see complimentary tautological names, such as Road Street intersecting with Street Road. Or Highway Trail and Trail Highway, but Highway Trail had a highway built on top of it and the former Trail Highway became a walking trail.
This was a fascinating video. You could consider first and second order tautologies. Thus Massachusetts means "big hill place," but only becomes tautological if you refer to it as a hilly place [which it is].
There's also River North Esk in Aberdeenshire. "Esk" means "River" in Scottish. Therefore it's River North River. Also, if you walk down Prospect Road in Starbeck (North Yorkshire) you'll see a row of streets that all have avenue as their theme: Avenue Terrace, Avenue Place, Avenue Street and Avenue Road.
Isn't the Mississippi River also a place name? By the way, I know of a few more. Around the corner from my house is a small road called El Camino Way, which literally means "The Way Way," and my family always found that funny. There is a Lake Lagunita on the campus of Stanford University. Conversely, there is a geological formation in Arizona called Table Mesa, which I guess could be considered redundant (or at least unoriginal) given that mesa literally means "table" in Spanish. Additionally, as you mentioned, there is a Hall Auditorium at my alma mater, but it is named after a person by that name (but a different one from the one mentioned in the video). A lot of alumni make fun of its seemingly redundant name, though.
It's not a place name, but "pizza pie" is a tautological food name. The Outerbridge Crossing was called Crossing instead of Bridge so it's less awkward to pronounce. Most of these tautological place names came about because the English speakers did not know the meaning of the foreign words used to describe the places. They just thought they were proper nouns.
In Malaysia, a location named Masjid Jamek has the same double misnomer, in Bahasa Malaysia. It literally translate to "mosque mosque". So if you find yourself at a mosque around Masjid Jamek, you'd be at Mosque Mosque's Mosque.
it's not just English. The original name for Mount Etna is Mongibello, which comes from "mons" (Latin -mountain) and "jabal" (Arabic -mountain) so Mountain Mountain.
A slightly less obvious one is all the places named "Glendale", which combines a word of Scottish Gaelic origin and a northern English dialect word into a name that means "valley-valley". Also, Wikipedia tells me there is a valley named Glendale in Northumberland, England, named for the river Glen, which makes it even more confusing. (Side note: have you done a video on names for places that mislead you?)
Nebraska means Flat Water, which refers to the Platte River which means Flat Water. There is a town on the river called North Platte which isnt even on the North Platte river, and isnt even the north most town on the river. The creek in my town is called Lincoln creek and the capital of the state is also called Lincoln but they are in completely different places. There is a town called Holbrook not even 20 miles away from a city called Holdrege, but there names have literally nothing to do with each other, and come from completely different origins. God I love America
I was reading the etymology of "Nebraska". As far as I can figure out, the "r" is pronounced in one of the original languages by saying something like /l/ while sticking the tongue out. Ni Bl[stick tongue out]aske. (Ni means water, blaske means flat.) Another pair like Holbrook/Holdredge is Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A saskatoon is a certain fruit; Saskatchewan is from "kisiskaaciwani siipiy" (swift flowing river) where "siipiy" is the cognate of [Missi]sippi. In North Carolina, Davidson and Davidson Township (which are adjacent, but in different counties) are not in or next to Davidson County.
Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards has this place Bengloarafurd, in which the original settler left just prior to the Dragarian and the Easterner fight over it. They call it ford, or in their language Ben. Easterner held the ford and name it Ben Ford, or in their language Ben Gazlo. The Dragarian won the place and rename it Bengazlo Ford, and shorten it to Benglo Ford which in the Dragon tongue is Benglo Ara. The Dragon language fall out of favor and replace by Northwestern tongue and the place is call Bengloara Ford, eventually morphed into Bengloarafurd, and the crossing become Bengloarafurd Ford. After the Interregnum, the river is dredged and they build a bridge crossing the river and it's Bengloarafurd Bridge. The town of Bengloarafurd next to it renamed itself after the bridge engineer Troe.
“Non-sovereign entities, whatever that means.” Those are essentially pseudo-states. At face value, they appear to be countries, but they’re not independent. Since you’re British, some non-sovereign entities ruled by your country include Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Jersey, and Gibraltar. Other examples include Greenland (part of Denmark), Aruba (part of the Netherlands), Puerto Rico (part of the US), and Hong Kong (part of China (even though they don’t want to be at the moment)).
In Boulder, Colorado, we have Table Mesa. In English, mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation. In Spanish, mesa is a table. So, yeah, we have Table Table. Or, Mesa Mesa, if you like.
Just a side note: this is far from being an English-specific feature. Pretty much any area that switched languages at least once has this kind of place names. Even if not, great many languages add some type of -mount to their mountain names and -burg to their city names. Tien Shan Mountains = "Sky Mountains Mountains", Huang Che River = "Yellow River River", and half the Russian cities are called "City of Something-city", such as "St. Petersburg City" or "City of Volgograd" (grad = city).
There's a lake just east of Finland, the place is called Carelia, and they speak Carelian, which is almost just a Finnish dialect. Russians and Swedes pulled a border through Carelia, so the eastern part of it became a language of it's own. However, the lake is in Finnish and Carelian - järvi. I don't remember the first part pf the name - let's say it is (was) Pyhäjärvi (Holy Lake), the most common lake name in Finland, appearing in different parts of the country. So the Swedish scribes didn't know what Pyhäjärvi means, that's why they wrote Pyhä(?)järvisjö, adding their name for a lake - so they made it 'Holy(?) Lake Lake'. Then Russian scribes needed to write the name in their maps in Russian. But they didn't know what the name means - so they wrote it Pyhäjärvisjöozero. Now it was then called 'Holy Lake Lake Lake'. Then the Germans needed to copy this map for themselves, and they copied the name from the Russian map. They knew how to Latinize ('Germanize') the Russian letters, but they didn't know what the name meant. Yes - they too added their own name for a lake. So the place name became Pyhäjärvisjöozerosee: 'Holy Lake Lake Lake Lake'. Would you believe: the Swedes, Russians and Germans have modernized their maps, and have learned the toponymic names of Finnish.
The main waterway that splits the US down the middle is the Mississippi River -- Mississippi literally just means "big water" or "big river". Other redundancies -- "sharia law"... "sharia" means law. "Bharatnatyam Dance"... the "natyam" is derived from "nata" which means "dance"
I'd like to see a video explaining the origins of the name of every US State. I know the origins of Oklahoma. In the Choctaw/Chickasaw languages, "Okla Homma" means "Red Man".
I think “27 non sovereign entities” probably either means places like Taiwan or Palestine which are kind of yelled sometimes at if you call them countries, or it means that a certain region of a country speaks it but not the whole thing (like how Quebec is French but the rest of Canada is English)
Do you know why when naming a rivers, lakes and counties in the UK and Ireland, the descriptive word comes first (river Thames, county Cork), but in the US (and Canada, I think) the descriptive word comes second (Ohio river, Los Angeles county)?
Here in central Florida we have a river system called the Econlockhatchee. It comes from 2 different sources. The smaller source river is called the Little Econlockhatchee River and its larger source river is the Big Econlockhatchee River. Where they meet and combine is called... wait for it... The Little Big Econlockhatchee River. 😂 It's not really a tautological name (well the hatchee part is) but it's just as dumb and is worth mentioning as this is as close as I can see any name explain videos getting to it. Also on another similar topic is that in the malay languages (maybe other languages too but idk for sure) doubling a word places special emphasis on that word. I.e. Blue Blue means really blue and run run would mean to run faster so it wouldn't surprise me if there are some rivers that are literally river river for the larger rivers.
Schuylkill River means "Skulking Creek River" or pretty much "Skulking River River" Edit: I added my comment before I was done with the video and was delighted to see you used the same example!
I think this raises questions about ontologies between cultures of different languages. A language that doesn't have a specific word for river or stream might use the word for water to describe the river, causing it to be named water river. This isn't profound or anything, but I think differing worldviews can cause or at least affect these things happening.
If you're in New Mexico, USA, and refer to the "Rio Grande River," the locals will immediately identify you as an outsider, as you just said "Big River River." Locals simply call the river the "Rio Grande" without using the English word "river."
Great video! East Timor is a really fascinating one for me because it's tautological in every language the name is officially translated to (Timor-Leste in Portuguese, the country's de jure name; Timor-L'orosae in Tetum, and Timor Timur in Bahasa). P.s. Timor is pronounced "Tee-mor" not "Tai-mor" :)
In the United States of America, we have a lot of duplicates in our legal system because we were accommodating both the English and French. Example: will and testament.
That like how the tallest mountain in Hawai‘i is known as Mauna Kea which means white mountain. Some people (mostly non-local people) call it Mt. Mauna Kea meaning Mt. White Moutain
I’m not sure if the example of Mount Oyama belongs here, because locals never call the mountain like that, simply “Oyama”. This happens only on the English maps or road signs. But what is interesting to me is Fujisan, the most famous mountain in Japan, is usually called as “Mount Fuji” in English and not like “Mount Fujisan” and even more rarely “Mount Fujiyama” (Yama and San both mean mountain). In the case of Oyama, it may either because the name is too short and sounds weird if called like “Mount O”, or maybe because the name literally means “O(big)Yama(mountain)” and it doesn’t make sense to separate these two words.
no locals do that. hence the existence of this video. tautological naming of english is extremely prevalent in kyoto to the point that it became awkward when i went there.
Let's hear some other dumb tautological names you guys have heard of!
Yes
The La Brea Tar Pits in California means "The 'The Tar' Tar Pits.
I thought that Potomac River was an example, but wiki says it's just a coincidence.
torpenhow means hill hill hill
Sahara Desert. With the word Sahara meaning desert in Arabic. So it means Desert Desert.
Quite surprised you didn’t mention the Sahara Desert, which is probably the biggest place with a tautological name. Being that “sahara” means desert in Arabic, the name means Desert Desert.
I'm surprised at the Sahara desert and lake Chad
The Sahara is what jumped to mind the second I saw this video in my feed! It’s the main one I usually see cited all around the internet as an example of a tautological name.
In Iran, Desht-i-khavir means "the big desert" too
I thought Saraha meant "Great desert" so it was "Great desert desert".
I immediately thought of this and the Gobi, which as I have been told also means desert.
Master Shifu is literally "Master master", since Shifu means master in Chinese (師傅, shi1 fu4).
I always try to explain that to my friends and they still think shifu is a name
I'm guessing "shifu" comes from the English word "chef"?
Because "master chef", at least in its complete sense, makes sense, in actual English. In Chinese, I guess not.
@@SirThanksalot_1 Interesting connection, although to keep the records straight there's little chance these are related like that. In Chinese we often have words formed from repeating characters with essentially the same meaning. On their own the characters 師 and 傅 both have a meaning of "master/ teacher/ scholar". Put them together then you form the word for "master".
@@SirThanksalot_1 oh and in the cantonese version of kung fu panda po literally calls his master shifu shifu
@@adrianatgaming8640 wait, it does?🤣🤣🤣
It was so long ago when i watched the cartoon
What is it in cantonese? 😶
The La Brea Tar Pits is my favorite one. "La brea" simply means "the tar" in Spanish, so the name comes out as "The the Tar Tar Pits".
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: "The The Angels Angels of Anaheim" :)
The the tartar pits
We have a good one here in Scotland torpenlaw hill tor(hill),pen(hill),law(hill) so hill hill hill hill
I thought "la brea" meant "the tar pits," which would be better. Oh well.
@@chrisinnes2128 There's also a Torpenhow Hill in Cumbria
The country of Chad’s name comes from the local word for “lake” referring to Lake Chad, which in turn means “Lake Lake.”
So we basically call tough, confident, athletic guys who are perceived as attractive, "lakes"
@@aaronodonoghue1791 ever seen a rapid water river?
The Chad lake vs Virgin river.
Reminds me of a Loch called “Loch Lochy”.
DC comics stands for Detective Comics comics and that frustrates me so much
NNEEEEEERRDD!! - Homer J Simpson
What?! Really?!
Ong's Jukebox Channel yeah
@@Ong.s_Jukebox no , the DC in Dc comics doesn't stand for anything , people just assume it stand for dc comics because they had a series called decective comics
It's District of Columbia comics
"river" stopped sounding like an actual word halfway through the vid
Also, the spelling no longer looks correct.
czcams.com/video/GX8-b5ixnjw/video.html
Don't mind me, I'm just going to the automated teller machine machine to enter my personal identification number number.
Those two! Awe man! Get me! Also VIN number. Vehicle identification number number. Ugh. 🤦🏻♂️
Be careful not to catch the corona virus disease virus too.
(I’ve heard people on the news call it the COVID virus)
East Timor is now officially called Timor-Leste and Leste means East in Portuguese... So it still means East East
It's called Timor Timur in Indonesian. Those words are obviously cognates.
@@pierreabbat6157 interestingly, the Dutch (later Indonesian) part of Timor is actually called Timor Barat, which means West Timor, aka west east
@@aryowisnuwardhana6666 cyks what
It’s also pronounced temore in stead of how he said it
I don't see anything wrong with the name, it just means the east of the east, and the name os true, since the country is the east of eastern island
English Starship Captain: I hereby name this planet "World Planet".
Right by Oslo there is a place called Nesoddtangen. "nes", "odde" and "tange" all mean a small cape, so it's called the cape-cape-cape...
I will asume that you understand danish, and share a couple of word plays i have concocted: "Kriminalforbryder", og "Yderligt-Gående Radikal-Ekstremist"
I just regret that they don't translate well into english.
Caped Cape of Capes
Likewise with Torpenhow. 'Tor', 'pen' and 'how' are all synonyms for 'hill'.
I almost read that as... you know... 💀💀
Ohio isn't even the only US state to have such a name. Connecticut also means "large river" and refers to the Connecticut River
Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. All of these are rivers.
@@thematthew761
So a lot of states are called “River” 🤣 That’s hysterical.
@@thematthew761 The question is whether they all mean “big river” too
@@thematthew761 But how many of those names actuality mean 'river'? A lot of US states are named after the people that originally lived there, but it'd be interesting to know why those people called themselves those things. I'm sure they're not all river people.
And why didn't the British come up with a more original name than Georgia for that state, given there was already a country with that name?
And "chow mein noodles" means "fried noodles noodles".
And the number of times I hear "PIN number" which means "personal identification number number"
Same as "VIP person".
Acronyms as names, I feel like have a different purpose and actually kinda make sense. Because acronyms often tend to become words themselves and can develop their own definitions. VIP is becoming an adjective that can describe the person, or can describe a place that the person goes to (VIP Lounge) and so sometimes adding the word "Person" might be necessary for clarity, it's still shorter than "very important person" so it fulfills the desire for an acronym and it sounds less awkward than saying "V I person"
This is different than "chai tea" which means "tea tea" and is longer than just saying "chai" or "tea"
And then there's your vehicle's VIN
(Vehicle Identification Number)
"What's your VIN number?"
And "ATM machine." AAARGH.
And Nic cards network identification card cards
Fun fact: The state of Ohio doesn’t include the Ohio river. It’s mostly owned by Kentucky.
But it's still our southern border.
That’s why it’s called the Ohio river valley
Which kind of bugs the states across the river from Kentucky
"The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club."
I've always been led to believe that many tautological names come from a simple misunderstand and miscommunication when 2 languages meet.
you simply have one person asking for the name of a specific landmark and the second person interpretting that as them asking for the generic name for that kind of landmark int heir language..
It's more that before communities were as interconnected as they are today many people would only know of one River/hill/whatever near them, or at least only often need to refer to one, and so they'd just call it the river, without needing a specific name for it. So it is when languages meet, but it's not from confusion about what the newcomers are asking
People also forget old toponyms meaning, and add a more common term to explain an old one that isn't so common.
The country of Poland is technically tautological. It comes from the Polish word "pole" (pronounced poleh) and means field or land. So in English, it means Land Land
land land
I'd argue that they are less dumb and more straightforward. E.g. in German Spongebob's full name is "Spongebob Schwammkopf", which literally translates to "Spongebob Spongehead".
Spongebob Squarepants in Polish is "Spongebob Kanciastoporty".
Kanciasty = angular
Porty = pants/trousers
So Angular-Pants or Angular-Trousers.
Which makes the Polish name more accurate to the original English name. Poland for the win over Germany.
In Brazil it's called Bob Esponja Calça Quadrada (literal translation of SpongeBob SquarePants)
What would "SquarePants" literally be in German?
We just say Svampbob Fyrkant (Spongebob Square) in Sweden.
In Turkey he is called Süngerbob Karepantalon - aka a literal translation of Spongebob Squarepants-
the holy trinity:
"river river"
"river big river"
"big river river"
the best one I saw while going through that wikipedia list has to be: the City Of Townsville, in Queensland, Australia.
As an Australian i can confirm that the Powerpuff Girls live there.
The "Towns" in "Townsville" comes from the surname "Towns", so this one's coincidental
Having met quite a few people from Townville, 99% of them were really racist.
@@ANTSEMUT1 ?????????? Why are you here if you want to complain about completely off topic nonsense
Most Qlders get confused by multi-syllabic words. Best keep the concepts elementary!
In the “Back To the Future” movies, the fictional home town of Marty McFly is Hill Valley. Just the opposite of a tautology, an oxymoron!
Hmm. That reminds me that we have a Ridgedale Road in my city.
No the town could be on a Hill in a larger Valley such as California’s Central Valley where I believe the movies take place
Like when people talk about, "cheesy queso." So you're talking about cheesy...cheese?
Second is, "chai tea." Why, yes this is tea tea
If i'm not wrong, Portugal (portus-calis) derive from latin "portus" which means port and celtic "calis", which also means port
Portugal : port port?
You could put that as a hypothesis. As for the first part, Portu-, there's no doubt it mean port, but as for -gal, it's harder to say. Some suggest it comes from Gallaeci, the Celtic tribe that inhabited what's modern day Galicia in Spain, therefore its name. Some other people think it comes from "calidus", which means warm. There's also the hypothesis that it comes from Gaia, as in the Greek name of the godess, this is because when it used to be a small settlement (the modern city of Porto or Oporto, used to be called Portugal), and it was divided into two towns Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia ( it seems that at times they were called separatedly as Porto Cale, and Vila Nova de Gaia which would bring down this theory, but i can't tell if Porto Cale comes after or before the union of both places with the info i got. And if you ask me I believe that this Gaia comes from the same place thar Galicia, but it got confused with the godess). If it indeed comes from Gallaeci, the etymology gets wierd cause the many names Celtic tribes have had may or may not have the same origin, but it most likely means something like wood or hill.
@@thenormann3773 thanks for the answer! I'm not sure where i saw this hypotesis, probably it isn't correct though
I thought it came from arabic bortugaal meaning sweet orange valley
English is also the lingua franca of air travel. Air Traffic Control, Pilots, and other relevant personnel all use English when they're on duty.
The former French province of Provence takes its name from Latin "Provincia" meaning "province".
Wow you said "river" so much in this video that it no longer sounds like a real word
Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. These are states named after rivers and those rivers are tautological.
Well, not all of them tho. Colorado river means Red River, or Colored River (in Spanish to be colored generally implies blushing)
The smartest phrase I've heard an englishman saying in my whole life:
SORRY ABOUT THAT.
There are some counties in New England: Berkshire County, Hampshire County, Cheshire County. shire meaning county
In Norway we have a place called Nesodden (a bit south of Oslo), on Nesodden we have a settlement called Nesoddtangen.
Nes is used a lot in Norwegian place names, it means a sharp and thin piece of land that juts out in to a lake or sea.
Odd/odde means a piece of land shaped like a tongue that juts into a lake or sea, it can also mean the outermost point in a nes.
Well, tangen means a sharp edge (on a tool) OR a small sharp piece of land that juts out in to a lake or sea.
So in Norway we have a place called thin sharp piece of land that juts into water thrice, without English, or any invasion ! More poetically in English it could be called Peninsula-peninsula-peninsula.
Why so many words for lands jutting into seas or lakes you ask? Have you seen the coast of Norway?
My favorite example is fictional. In Pixar's "Brave", much of the story takes place in Castle DunBroch.
"Dun" and "broch" are types of castle.
So, they're living in Castle Castlecastle.
Wangi Wangi - is pronounced with the same sort of g as in George - also it’s more of an o than an a - so Won-gee. Like many indigenous names it’s actually a plural - Wangi is the Awabikal word for water, so Wangi Wangi means lots of water. Like Wagga (also in NSW) which is the Wirajiri word for crow - so Wagga Wagga (it’s full name) means ‘many crows’ - also locals (and most Australians) rarely ever use both names. it’s just Wangi or Wagga.
Also it’s pronounced Teemor not Tymore
9:05 The "me" or "mae" actually means "mother" in Thai, not "river". The northern Thai usually prefixes rivers or mountains with this word.
Interestingly, the main river that flows through Bangkok, "Chao Phraya" river, used to be called "Mae Nam" or "Menam" river in old European maps. The word "Mae Nam" literally translates to "river" ("mae" is "mother" and "nam" is "water").
California has a few of these, one that comes to mind are the La Brea Tar Pits. “Brea” means tar or tar pits.
I was going to mention this as The La Brea Tar Pits = "the the tar pits tar pits." Another place in California is El Cerrito Hills, which means "the little hills hills". La Brea is better though.
Brea just means tar or pitch. Tar Pit, in Spanish, is pozo de brea.
@@JWRogersPS Thanks for the correction!
*The the tar tar pits
9:10 No, Me in Mekong is not a Thai word for river. Me is pronounced Mae meaning mother. Thai call a river a Mother Water, a Mae Naam with Naam being water.
Meh, you are kinda right, but also wrong. maenaam kong got shortened to maekong because you don´t call rancid mother to rivers out of nothing. You also have to separate the meaning of the word from its roots, mae, is mother, maenaam is river, and naam is water, it doesn't matter if river has the cute name of motherwater it's still river, as a wolf in japanese is still a wolf despite being called greatgod, so if you are talking about the big wolf god, you are forced to say "Ouki na oukami no kami" being tautological in its own language, but you cannot separate the meaning of a compound word, cause now it's a new word, and when it forms new words it will use itself not the roots it's made of, even if it seems so. There's also the dilemma here, is it mae when it means river derived from the same root as mae when it mean mother, or it's just a coincidence that got fixed by adding naam after mae: I mean that the perception of Mother Water may be a folk etymology and the two words used to be different roots that by chance got merged.
If you add town after an Irish "Bally" place name, then it would be tautological because bally comes from the Irish "baile" meaning town. For example, Ballyshannon town, Ballincollig town or Ballymena town. Most Irish place-names are anglicised versions of an Irish name so its easy to see why tautological names are common enough in Ireland. For example Knockboy Mountain means yellow mountain mountain.
A couple from my local region.
Connecticut river: long Tidal river river.
Mount monadnock: mount mountain that stands alone
@@nigelmarvin1387 New England in general. The mountain is a better clue to my state than the river,
My Psychologist: High Name Explain doesn't exist, he can't hurt you
High Name Explain: 2:02
A place near where I lived in Cumbria was called Torpenhow hill. In the old local dialect a Tor is a hill, a Pen is a type of hill and a How is... a hill. So it’s called HillHillHill Hill.
wait fence is a shortening of defence?
My Favorite example is the Rio Grande River which means River Grand River
Also I’ve lived by the Outer Bridge my entire life and had no clue it was actually the Outerbrige
i had a lightbulb moment the other day when i noticed that the french words "mou" (soft) and "mouiller" (to get something wet) might come from the same origin
They do.
In New Zealand we have a suburb of Auckland (I think, sorry I don't live in Auckland) called "Mount Maunganui" which just means "Mount Big Mountain", not exactly that but I think it's funny.
Mt maunganui is in tauranga, which is about 2.5 hours drive from Auckland. I think tauranga Harbour itself translates to harbour harbour but I'm not sure
I have some places with names like this in my writing. Someone tried to argue that I couldn't give a forest a name that literally meant forest, and I introduced them to several examples of hill hill
In southern Maine USA there is Sebago Lake. Sebago in the local Native American language means, Big Lake. Making "Big Lake Lake" next to that Is Little Sebago Lake, "Little Big Lake Lake"
"Laguna Lake" in the Philippines has the Spanish name of Laguna de Bay which means lake of the bay or bay lake. When the Americans colonized the Philippines, they gave it the English name "Laguna Lake" instead if something that makes sense like "Bay Lake."
I just wanted to say that the Celtic word "pen" can also mean head, so not every time pen is used in the name of a hill does it actually mean hill.
Zaire is the Kongo word for river but the country itsdelf was once called Zaire and it's currency was once known as the Zaire. River, country and currency all meant river
"Head-turned-arm-on-chin Name Explain guy doesn't exist, he can't hurt you"
head-turned-arm-on-chin Name Explain guy:
Fun fact:
German has a tendency to cut off those added descriptive names. Even when talking about 'English' geological features.
I think what comes closest to a tautological name is "Nürnberg", where the first element means "stony rock" and the second means "hill, mountain" - and even then it's not really redundant.
@@fermintenava5911 Der Chiemsee ist, meines Wissens, ein Seesee
@@fermintenava5911 Well a mountain could also be covered by vegetation.
Hey there! As someone from an old town sat right on the Schuylkill, just wanted to let you know that although we spell it "kill" instead of "kil" here in PA, my town at least does simply call it "the Schuylkill," since the name was taught in school and everyone already knows the meaning of its name!
In California, there are a lot of Spanish place names with articles (el, la). In English, people say "the" in front of them, so it's literally "the the (thing)". Ex. The El camino real, the La Serena hotel, the Los Angeles airport (the the Angels airport)...
I mean that one's easy, you could simply translate to "the *{{thing}}* of the *{{Spanish transcription}}* "
For example, LAX would be "the hotel of the angels"
If tautological names existed only because of English then they would only go 2 deep at most. A river for example would either have a proper name or just be called river leading to either 'name river' or 'river river' style names, but never 'river river river' and since there are plenty of that last example it's clearly not caused by English influence.
Chai Tea
Naan Bread
I live by a river in Canada with a tautological name: the Skeena River. "Skeena" is a corruption of a local Indigenous word meaning "misty river", so "Skeena River" fully translated is "misty river river".
Wangi wangi is about 30 minutes from me and we call it “waan-gee waan-gee” or just “waan -gee”.
I work at a Godiva chocolate store. The name "Godiva" and the word "chocolate" both ultimately mean "Gift of God/the gods".
Before Elfgivu gift of the elves when still pagan then changed to Godgifu. Gift of god
Everyone is first untill you refresh
that's deep.
This isn’t exactly an official tautological name, but I used to have an inside joke with an old friend because they were trying to learn Latvian and a teacher on youtube said “Christmas eglīte” which is all cool until you realise “Eglīte” means “Christmas tree” so they were saying “Christmas christmas tree”, I pointed this out and it became a common joke to make every so often
My grandparents lived on the Coosa River in rural Alabama. Growing up, I stayed with them for a few weeks every Summer and visited them often as an adult. They just referred to the Coosa River as "The River", since it was the only river in their daily life.
I was 25 years old, before I knew the actual name of the river was "Coosa". I had some friends over there, and they asked me the name of the river, and despite me fishing on it for years with my grandfather, I had to look on a map to tell them. Natural curiosity should have prompted me to look it up years earlier, but since I knew it, since I was a baby, before I could remember, I suppose, I just took it for granted?
I just want to say that I'm very impressed that you said Schuylkill almost perfectly. I rarely hear it said correctly by people who aren't from the area. If you're curious, locals pronounce it like "school kill," but the first L is very soft, almost silent, if that makes any sense.
If you do make that double name place name video, I sure hope it includes Walla Walla, which has been a name that has amused me ever since I was a kid sitting next to our USA map at dinner right near the west coast.
“Brea”, translates to either pitch or tar in English, so “La Brea tar pits” can be translated as “The Tar tar pits.”
Mixing languages-US Rio Grande River. Spain’s Rio Guadalquivir, derived from Arabic وَادِي الكَبِير (wādī l-kabīr, literally “the great river”).
I’m a native Floridian and many waterways throughout Florida sport “hatchee” (correct spelling) in its name. As you said, it comes from the Muskogee language and means river. For instance, there’s the Caloosahatchee river in southwest Florida through which water from Lake Okeechobee flows. Interestingly, Okeechobee roughly translates to “big water” (not sure of the native language) so I guess that makes it a tautological name as well.
I'm going to watch Name Explain Appellation Explanation on the peak summit of Mount Mountain after I cross Lake Lake in a boat named Boat.
There's a valley with a tautological place name on the edge of my home town (Hastings, Sussex), the place is Combe Valley ...
A combe (/kuːm/; also spelled coombe or coomb and, in place names, comb) can refer either to a steep, narrow valley, or to a small valley or large hollow on the side of a hill; in any case, it is often understood simply to mean a small valley through which a watercourse does not run.
So it's called "Valley Valley", and the valley has given it's name to the river running through it now!
So now you have the Combe (referring to the area) Combe (referring to the river) Valley (referring to the geography)!
Is that related to the Welsh "cwm"?
I'd like to see complimentary tautological names, such as Road Street intersecting with Street Road. Or Highway Trail and Trail Highway, but Highway Trail had a highway built on top of it and the former Trail Highway became a walking trail.
I was going to suggest Mount Oyama but you actually mentioned it! My husband and I climbed it back in the 80s.
Tipis is actually a double plural. In the Lakota language Ti means house and pi makes it plural. So when we say tipis, we're saying houseses.
This was a fascinating video. You could consider first and second order tautologies. Thus Massachusetts means "big hill place," but only becomes tautological if you refer to it as a hilly place [which it is].
There's also River North Esk in Aberdeenshire. "Esk" means "River" in Scottish. Therefore it's River North River.
Also, if you walk down Prospect Road in Starbeck (North Yorkshire) you'll see a row of streets that all have avenue as their theme: Avenue Terrace, Avenue Place, Avenue Street and Avenue Road.
Isn't the Mississippi River also a place name?
By the way, I know of a few more. Around the corner from my house is a small road called El Camino Way, which literally means "The Way Way," and my family always found that funny. There is a Lake Lagunita on the campus of Stanford University. Conversely, there is a geological formation in Arizona called Table Mesa, which I guess could be considered redundant (or at least unoriginal) given that mesa literally means "table" in Spanish.
Additionally, as you mentioned, there is a Hall Auditorium at my alma mater, but it is named after a person by that name (but a different one from the one mentioned in the video). A lot of alumni make fun of its seemingly redundant name, though.
There's a road near me called Table Mesa... So it's basically Table Table
It's not a place name, but "pizza pie" is a tautological food name. The Outerbridge Crossing was called Crossing instead of Bridge so it's less awkward to pronounce. Most of these tautological place names came about because the English speakers did not know the meaning of the foreign words used to describe the places. They just thought they were proper nouns.
In Malaysia, a location named Masjid Jamek has the same double misnomer, in Bahasa Malaysia. It literally translate to "mosque mosque".
So if you find yourself at a mosque around Masjid Jamek, you'd be at Mosque Mosque's Mosque.
it's not just English. The original name for Mount Etna is Mongibello, which comes from "mons" (Latin -mountain) and "jabal" (Arabic -mountain) so Mountain Mountain.
A slightly less obvious one is all the places named "Glendale", which combines a word of Scottish Gaelic origin and a northern English dialect word into a name that means "valley-valley". Also, Wikipedia tells me there is a valley named Glendale in Northumberland, England, named for the river Glen, which makes it even more confusing. (Side note: have you done a video on names for places that mislead you?)
Nebraska means Flat Water, which refers to the Platte River which means Flat Water. There is a town on the river called North Platte which isnt even on the North Platte river, and isnt even the north most town on the river. The creek in my town is called Lincoln creek and the capital of the state is also called Lincoln but they are in completely different places. There is a town called Holbrook not even 20 miles away from a city called Holdrege, but there names have literally nothing to do with each other, and come from completely different origins. God I love America
I was reading the etymology of "Nebraska". As far as I can figure out, the "r" is pronounced in one of the original languages by saying something like /l/ while sticking the tongue out. Ni Bl[stick tongue out]aske. (Ni means water, blaske means flat.)
Another pair like Holbrook/Holdredge is Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A saskatoon is a certain fruit; Saskatchewan is from "kisiskaaciwani siipiy" (swift flowing river) where "siipiy" is the cognate of [Missi]sippi.
In North Carolina, Davidson and Davidson Township (which are adjacent, but in different counties) are not in or next to Davidson County.
Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards has this place Bengloarafurd, in which the original settler left just prior to the Dragarian and the Easterner fight over it. They call it ford, or in their language Ben. Easterner held the ford and name it Ben Ford, or in their language Ben Gazlo. The Dragarian won the place and rename it Bengazlo Ford, and shorten it to Benglo Ford which in the Dragon tongue is Benglo Ara. The Dragon language fall out of favor and replace by Northwestern tongue and the place is call Bengloara Ford, eventually morphed into Bengloarafurd, and the crossing become Bengloarafurd Ford. After the Interregnum, the river is dredged and they build a bridge crossing the river and it's Bengloarafurd Bridge. The town of Bengloarafurd next to it renamed itself after the bridge engineer Troe.
“Non-sovereign entities, whatever that means.”
Those are essentially pseudo-states. At face value, they appear to be countries, but they’re not independent. Since you’re British, some non-sovereign entities ruled by your country include Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Jersey, and Gibraltar. Other examples include Greenland (part of Denmark), Aruba (part of the Netherlands), Puerto Rico (part of the US), and Hong Kong (part of China (even though they don’t want to be at the moment)).
Yup. Basically places that are de jure a part of a larger nation, but are more or less self-governing with little influence from the main nation.
One of Brazil's biggest rivers(Rio Paraná/Paraná River) is also named "river river". Paraná means river in an extinct tupi dialect.
In Boulder, Colorado, we have Table Mesa. In English, mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation. In Spanish, mesa is a table. So, yeah, we have Table Table. Or, Mesa Mesa, if you like.
Just a side note: this is far from being an English-specific feature. Pretty much any area that switched languages at least once has this kind of place names. Even if not, great many languages add some type of -mount to their mountain names and -burg to their city names. Tien Shan Mountains = "Sky Mountains Mountains", Huang Che River = "Yellow River River", and half the Russian cities are called "City of Something-city", such as "St. Petersburg City" or "City of Volgograd" (grad = city).
I grew up within a few blocks of Laguna Lake in San Luis Obispo, CA. I've always wondered why they called it Lagoon Lake!
There's a lake just east of Finland, the place is called Carelia, and they speak Carelian, which is almost just a Finnish dialect. Russians and Swedes pulled a border through Carelia, so the eastern part of it became a language of it's own. However, the lake is in Finnish and Carelian - järvi. I don't remember the first part pf the name - let's say it is (was) Pyhäjärvi (Holy Lake), the most common lake name in Finland, appearing in different parts of the country.
So the Swedish scribes didn't know what Pyhäjärvi means, that's why they wrote Pyhä(?)järvisjö, adding their name for a lake - so they made it 'Holy(?) Lake Lake'. Then Russian scribes needed to write the name in their maps in Russian. But they didn't know what the name means - so they wrote it Pyhäjärvisjöozero. Now it was then called 'Holy Lake Lake Lake'. Then the Germans needed to copy this map for themselves, and they copied the name from the Russian map. They knew how to Latinize ('Germanize') the Russian letters, but they didn't know what the name meant.
Yes - they too added their own name for a lake. So the place name became Pyhäjärvisjöozerosee: 'Holy Lake Lake Lake Lake'.
Would you believe: the Swedes, Russians and Germans have modernized their maps, and have learned the toponymic names of Finnish.
The main waterway that splits the US down the middle is the Mississippi River -- Mississippi literally just means "big water" or "big river".
Other redundancies -- "sharia law"... "sharia" means law. "Bharatnatyam Dance"... the "natyam" is derived from "nata" which means "dance"
2:03 I am the only one kinda disturbed that his character has more detailed eyes here? It looks uncanny somehow-
Something that needs to be explained is why we say "River Thames" (river in 1st position) and "Ohio River" (river in 2nd position).
french.
I'd like to see a video explaining the origins of the name of every US State. I know the origins of Oklahoma. In the Choctaw/Chickasaw languages, "Okla Homma" means "Red Man".
I think “27 non sovereign entities” probably either means places like Taiwan or Palestine which are kind of yelled sometimes at if you call them countries, or it means that a certain region of a country speaks it but not the whole thing (like how Quebec is French but the rest of Canada is English)
Do you know why when naming a rivers, lakes and counties in the UK and Ireland, the descriptive word comes first (river Thames, county Cork), but in the US (and Canada, I think) the descriptive word comes second (Ohio river, Los Angeles county)?
Here in central Florida we have a river system called the Econlockhatchee. It comes from 2 different sources. The smaller source river is called the Little Econlockhatchee River and its larger source river is the Big Econlockhatchee River. Where they meet and combine is called... wait for it... The Little Big Econlockhatchee River. 😂
It's not really a tautological name (well the hatchee part is) but it's just as dumb and is worth mentioning as this is as close as I can see any name explain videos getting to it.
Also on another similar topic is that in the malay languages (maybe other languages too but idk for sure) doubling a word places special emphasis on that word. I.e. Blue Blue means really blue and run run would mean to run faster so it wouldn't surprise me if there are some rivers that are literally river river for the larger rivers.
Schuylkill River means "Skulking Creek River" or pretty much "Skulking River River"
Edit: I added my comment before I was done with the video and was delighted to see you used the same example!
I think this raises questions about ontologies between cultures of different languages. A language that doesn't have a specific word for river or stream might use the word for water to describe the river, causing it to be named water river. This isn't profound or anything, but I think differing worldviews can cause or at least affect these things happening.
If you're in New Mexico, USA, and refer to the "Rio Grande River," the locals will immediately identify you as an outsider, as you just said "Big River River." Locals simply call the river the "Rio Grande" without using the English word "river."
Great video! East Timor is a really fascinating one for me because it's tautological in every language the name is officially translated to (Timor-Leste in Portuguese, the country's de jure name; Timor-L'orosae in Tetum, and Timor Timur in Bahasa). P.s. Timor is pronounced "Tee-mor" not "Tai-mor" :)
In the United States of America, we have a lot of duplicates in our legal system because we were accommodating both the English and French. Example: will and testament.
That like how the tallest mountain in Hawai‘i is known as Mauna Kea which means white mountain. Some people (mostly non-local people) call it Mt. Mauna Kea meaning Mt. White Moutain
I’m not sure if the example of Mount Oyama belongs here, because locals never call the mountain like that, simply “Oyama”. This happens only on the English maps or road signs. But what is interesting to me is Fujisan, the most famous mountain in Japan, is usually called as “Mount Fuji” in English and not like “Mount Fujisan” and even more rarely “Mount Fujiyama” (Yama and San both mean mountain). In the case of Oyama, it may either because the name is too short and sounds weird if called like “Mount O”, or maybe because the name literally means “O(big)Yama(mountain)” and it doesn’t make sense to separate these two words.
no locals do that. hence the existence of this video. tautological naming of english is extremely prevalent in kyoto to the point that it became awkward when i went there.