Pursuant to last week’s musings on place names, a reader offered this by email:
The longest city name is Bangkok.
“Huh?” you might be asking yourself. In my case, that would be short for “For goodness sake, Edmonton is longer than that,” to draw an example not entirely at random. But the answer is that Bangkok is, effectively, the city’s nickname. Here’s the whole thing, from the Guinness Book of Records.
krungthepmahanakhonamonrattanakosinmahintharaayuthayamahadilokphopnoppharatratchathaniburiromudomratchaniwetmahasathanamonpimanawatansathitsakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit
As an aside, this appears to be one of those Dick/Richard, Bill/William, Peggy/Margaret, Sally/Sarah, Polly/Mary nicknames, where the short version doesn’t actually appear in the long, unlike Doug/Douglas. But let’s not get started on nicknames. Well, maybe just a pause to note that this phenomenon is not limited to English. Pepe is the nickname for José, and Paco for Francisco.
If you’d like to explore some other long place names, check this out. And for Canadian places, we can of course turn to Macleans, although Wiki has other ideas, offering Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik Lake in Manitoba (apparently Cree for “where the wild trout are caught with fishing hooks”).
All going to show that there are, if not exactly an endless supply of ways to categorize place names, then at least likely more ways than we strictly need. But need, schmeed, when we’re having fun, right?
