RW Silly Names

        My vote for worst RW name goes to Idaho, which actually means nothing in any language at all. The legislator who was trying to arrange statehood for Idaho was rather abruptly given a deadline for naming the territory and someone told him that Idaho meant 'Jewel of the Mountains' in some unspecified Indian language. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

        Also keep in mind that RW placenames slowly mutate over centuries, so that what they meant originally often gets lost. A name like Wilm's Kirk could be a literal translation into English or it could be a transliteration into English of a name that doesn't mean anything like the English sound of it. 'Kirk' means 'church' in Scots English, so it could refer to a temple or shrine owned by or dedicated to someone named Wilm, Willem, William, Whilm, Whillom, Wilmas, etc, etc. It may not have originally been Wilm's Kirk, but rather Wilm Skirk or Wilmsgirk or whatever. Linguistic shift can produce some pretty major changes, which later residents attempt to rationalize. For example, in England, Wychwood has nothing to do with witches, but rather comes from Hwicce, an Anglo-Saxon tribe that resided in the area. Little Snorring has nothing to do with sleep (except being a rather sleepy little town), but gets its name from the people of Snorri. So Wilm's Kirk could come from anything that an imaginative GM chooses.

       (yeah, I know it actually comes from William Church, but hey, it's there, it's on the maps, it's in the histories, and unless we decide to completely re-write the maps and history, we have to live with it, and this is one way to account for it in a relatively painless way.

Andrew E. Larsen