Re: look up / advice request Boer War


"Jeff" <jorg826@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1cr2l.737$Ve.210@xxxxxxxxxxx
Don Moody wrote:
The confusion is ancient, well-known to locals, and some locals
will give a diferent designation in conversation because they think
it is posher. However, practically everybody I've come across when
talking to strangers, especially overseas, would not specify any
part of the general area. They'd say 'London', in the expectation
that strangers would know here that is even if totally ignorant of
the vast number of 'villages' which make up 'London'.

I agree. I was born in Edgware, but when, here in Canada, I'm asked
where I was born I always just say "London", whereas, in reality,
Edgware is most certainly not, by almost any definition, London.

Which neatly illustrates the point! Edgware itself isn't homogenous,
and is part of a London Borough as well as being on the London
Underground! And the Edgware Road doesn't start in Edgware but at
Marble Arch. It's one of the old roads which starts by saying where
it's going not where it's at. It really is much easier to tell
foreigners 'London' (which thy can spell) they use London lingo. What
would a poor foreigner make of 'I'm goin up West,' 'Where zakly? 'Dahn
the Dilly.' Which to a Londoner from the east or north at least is a
precise description of the proposed travel, even though it is both
'up' and 'down'. Or a north Londoner might say 'see yer a' 'oly Joes',
and another north Londoner would know the exact meeting place. They'd
also know to get a tube to Archway, which is used as a descriptive of
part of Holloway, isn't at the actual Archway, and from which one
would walk up to Highgate to the Basilica of St Joseph. There's no
special value in the two examples. They only illustrate what happens
in any megalopolis where ordinary folk have to balkanise it into
villages with local names in order to get a scale on which they can
live. If you don't live for a long time in the one megalopolis and
pick up the local terminology you won't be able to describe locations
accurately to locals. If you then try to use that terminology to
people who have never lived there, you leave them adrift in puzzles
and confusions. That's why the 'default' is to use the formal name of
the megalopolis.

It is a mistake of genealogical searching to try, from a distance, to
import precise meaning to descriptors recorded a long way away. You
just cannot know what value judgements were made when the original
information was given by a resident of a megalopolis to a recorder in
a distant land.

To illustrate the generality of this I'll say that my cousin who lives
in 'New York' is comprehensible by me when he uses that term but
becomes immediately incomprehensible when he starts using 'village'
designations which are quite clear to other residents of that city.

Don


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: look up / advice request Boer War
    ... They'd say 'London', in the expectation that strangers would know here that is even if totally ignorant of the vast number of 'villages' which make up 'London'. ... I was born in Edgware, but when, here in Canada, I'm asked where I was born I always just say "London", whereas, in reality, Edgware is most certainly not, by almost any definition, London. ...
    (soc.genealogy.britain)
  • Re: look up / advice request Boer War
    ... They'd say 'London', in the expectation that strangers ... Edgware is most certainly not, by almost any definition, London. ... illustrate what happens in any megalopolis where ordinary folk have to ...
    (soc.genealogy.britain)
  • Re: Hop Picking Season
    ... > A gardner/agricultural labourer from Edgware in Middlesex ... > he went hop picking in Kent. ... > They marry in a church convenient to London Railway ... > Question is July too early for hop picking? ...
    (soc.genealogy.britain)
  • Re: Oystercard/Zone 1 ext??
    ... north to south in the same day (crossing london by tube)so I presume ... if I got a PAYG Oyster and touched in at Isleworth, out at Edgware, in ... Edgware then the general avoidance measure is probably the West London ... And presumably even if one did go via zone 1, ...
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  • Re: GB Strike Mail 1971
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