The Wantsum Channel was a strait separating the Isle of Thanet from the north-eastern extremity of the English county of Kent and connecting the English Channel and the Thames Estuary . It was a major shipping route when Britain was part of the Roman Empire , and continued in use until it was closed by silting in the late Middle Ages . Its course is now represented by the River Stour and the River Wantsum , which is little more than a drainage ditch lying between Reculver and St Nicholas-at-Wade and joins the Stour about 1.7 miles (2.7 km) south-east of Sarre .
31-510: Eilert Ekwall , a 20th-century authority on English place-names, wrote that the name "Wantsum" derives from an Old English word "wandsum", meaning "winding". Bede , writing in or before 731, mentioned the Wantsum ( Vantsumu ) in describing the Isle of Thanet , but he also recorded an alternative name: he described the church at Reculver as being juxta ostium aquilonale fluminis Genladae , or "by
62-758: A county editor of the survey conducted by the English Place-Name Society (1923-date), his philological advice was often sought and acknowledged by scholars preparing the county volumes, such as Allen Mawer and Frank Stenton . He was competent not only in English philology, but also in Scandinavian and Celtic , making him ideally qualified as an authority on linguistic aspects of the place-names of England. His other work on English included scholarly editions of classic early-modern works such as John Jones' Practical Phonography of 1701 (1907),
93-460: A few. More recently many postcolonial countries revert to their own nomenclature for toponyms that have been named by colonial powers. Place names provide the most useful geographical reference system in the world. Consistency and accuracy are essential in referring to a place to prevent confusion in everyday business and recreation. A toponymist, through well-established local principles and procedures developed in cooperation and consultation with
124-580: A more specific sense, the term toponymy refers to an inventory of toponyms, while the discipline researching such names is referred to as toponymics or toponomastics . Toponymy is a branch of onomastics , the study of proper names of all kinds. A person who studies toponymy is called toponymist . The term toponymy comes from Ancient Greek : τόπος / tópos , 'place', and ὄνομα / onoma , 'name'. The Oxford English Dictionary records toponymy (meaning "place name") first appearing in English in 1876. Since then, toponym has come to replace
155-399: A person's death for the use of a commemorative name. In the same vein, writers Pinchevski and Torgovnik (2002) consider the naming of streets as a political act in which holders of the legitimate monopoly to name aspire to engrave their ideological views in the social space. Similarly, the revisionist practice of renaming streets , as both the celebration of triumph and the repudiation of
186-565: Is a process that can include restoring place names by Indigenous communities themselves. Frictions sometimes arise between countries because of toponymy, as illustrated by the Macedonia naming dispute in which Greece has claimed the name Macedonia , the Sea of Japan naming dispute between Japan and Korea , as well as the Persian Gulf naming dispute . On 20 September 1996 a note on
217-520: Is probably derived from an older language, such as Pelasgian , which was unknown to those who explained its origin. In his Names on the Globe , George R. Stewart theorizes that Hellespont originally meant something like 'narrow Pontus' or 'entrance to Pontus', Pontus being an ancient name for the region around the Black Sea , and by extension, for the sea itself. Especially in the 19th century,
248-679: The River Stour , which entered it at Stourmouth close to its midpoint; it was a two-mile-wide (3 km) strait. The southern end of the channel met the sea at Richborough ( Rutupiae ), downstream of Sandwich , while the northern end met the Thames Estuary at Reculver ( Regulbium ). That the Romans chose both sites for forts indicates the significance of the route, which their shipping commonly used to travel between Britain and continental Europe . Vikings raided Canterbury via
279-748: The Saxon Shore Way , the Stour Valley Walk , the Wantsum Walk and the Way of St Augustine. 51°23′N 1°14′E / 51.383°N 1.233°E / 51.383; 1.233 Eilert Ekwall Bror Oscar Eilert Ekwall (8 January 1877 in Vallsjö – 23 November 1964 in Lund ) was a Swedish academic, Professor of English at Sweden's Lund University from 1909 to 1942 and one of
310-483: The Småland region. Place-names Toponymy , toponymics , or toponomastics is the study of toponyms ( proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names ), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of any geographical feature , and full scope of the term also includes proper names of all cosmographical features. In
341-627: The United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names acknowledged that while common, the practice of naming geographical places after living persons (toponymic commemoration) could be problematic. Therefore, the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names recommends that it be avoided and that national authorities should set their own guidelines as to the time required after
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#1732772289881372-531: The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), applies the science of toponymy to establish officially recognized geographical names. A toponymist relies not only on maps and local histories, but interviews with local residents to determine names with established local usage. The exact application of a toponym, its specific language, its pronunciation, and its origins and meaning are all important facts to be recorded during name surveys. Scholars have found that toponyms provide valuable insight into
403-537: The City of London (1954), Studies on the Population of Medieval London (1956), and the monumental Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (1936, new editions 1940, 1947/51 and the last in 1960). The Dictionary remained the standard national reference resource for over 40 years, and is still valuable even though some aspects of Ekwall's methodology and some of his ideas are no longer accepted. Although not
434-642: The Wantsum Channel had dried up, apart from the large drainage ditch down the centre of the former channel, and associated feeder ditches. Efforts made by the monks of Minster-in-Thanet to manage the Wantsum in the Middle Ages are reflected in two names for parts of the Channel and Stour, "Abbot's Wall" and "Monk's Wall". During the 18th century, silting threatened the rich port of Sandwich and efforts were made to create sluices and channels to control
465-409: The Wantsum in 839. Deposition of shingle at Stonar, at the southern end of the Channel, gradually caused it to silt up; and shipping heading for Canterbury, formerly using the northern entrance, brought Fordwich into prominence as its outport. The silting continued, particularly during the 12th and 13th centuries, when Augustinian monks entered into land reclamation; eventually, by the 16th century,
496-413: The age of exploration, a lot of toponyms got a different name because of national pride. Thus the famous German cartographer Petermann thought that the naming of newly discovered physical features was one of the privileges of a map-editor, especially as he was fed up with forever encountering toponyms like 'Victoria', 'Wellington', 'Smith', 'Jones', etc. He writes: "While constructing the new map to specify
527-568: The anonymous Writing Scholar's Companion of 1695 (1911), and John Lydgate 's Siege of Thebes (1930). Notable other books or booklets were that on modern English phonology and morphology originally published in German in 1914, and still being reprinted in 1965 (English edition finally after Ekwall's death, in 1975); and that on the genitive of groups, with much relevance for place-name studies (1943). Ekwall also left behind an extensive body of influential academic articles and notes (many collected in
558-412: The basis for their etiological legends. The process of folk etymology usually took over, whereby a false meaning was extracted from a name based on its structure or sounds. Thus, for example, the toponym of Hellespont was explained by Greek poets as being named after Helle , daughter of Athamas , who drowned there as she crossed it with her brother Phrixus on a flying golden ram. The name, however,
589-590: The blocking of the north mouth of the Wantsum. The southern section of the Wantsum Channel is represented by the River Stour, which empties into the Strait of Dover at Pegwell Bay . The North Sea flood of 1953 led to the flooding of the land where the Wantsum Channel formerly ran, and briefly made the Isle of Thanet an island again. The Wantsum Channel area features in four recreational walking routes, these being
620-510: The books of 1931 and 1936 mentioned above), local working papers of Lund University, and a very large number of book reviews, all published over a period of some 60 years, in English, Swedish and German, and mostly referenced in von Feilitzen's bibliography. From 1935, Ekwall was a Fellow of the Swedish Academy of Letters and the Swedish Academy of Sciences . He and his wife Dagny founded a bursary for students at Lund University from
651-703: The detailed topographical portrayal and after consulting with and authorization of messr. Theodor von Heuglin and count Karl Graf von Waldburg-Zeil I have entered 118 names in the map: partly they are the names derived from celebrities of arctic explorations and discoveries, arctic travellers anyway as well as excellent friends, patrons, and participants of different nationalities in the newest northpolar expeditions, partly eminent German travellers in Africa, Australia, America ...". Toponyms may have different names through time, due to changes and developments in languages, political developments and border adjustments to name but
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#1732772289881682-458: The establishment of an independent Greek state, Turkish, Slavic and Italian place names were Hellenized, as an effort of "toponymic cleansing." This nationalization of place names can also manifest itself in a postcolonial context. In Canada, there have been initiatives in recent years " to restore traditional names to reflect the Indigenous culture wherever possible ". Indigenous mapping
713-469: The historical geography of a particular region. In 1954, F. M. Powicke said of place-name study that it "uses, enriches and tests the discoveries of archaeology and history and the rules of the philologists ." Toponyms not only illustrate ethnic settlement patterns, but they can also help identify discrete periods of immigration. Toponymists are responsible for the active preservation of their region's culture through its toponymy. They typically ensure
744-525: The internet reflected a query by a Canadian surfer, who said as follows: 'One producer of maps labeled the water body "Persian Gulf" on a 1977 map of Iran, and then "Arabian Gulf", also in 1977, in a map which focused on the Gulf States . I would gather that this is an indication of the "politics of maps", but I would be interested to know if this was done to avoid upsetting users of the Iran map and users of
775-462: The map showing Arab Gulf States'. This symbolizes a further aspect of the topic, namely the spilling over of the problem from the purely political to the economic sphere. A geographic names board is an official body established by a government to decide on official names for geographical areas and features. Most countries have such a body, which is commonly (but not always) known under this name. Also, in some countries (especially those organised on
806-518: The north mouth of the river Genlade". Ekwall compared this to the name of Yantlet Creek, which separates the Isle of Grain from mainland Kent. He suggested an origin in the Old English word gegnlad meaning "'backwater' or the like, [and] very likely the source of the word inlet [for] 'arm of the sea, [or] creek'." From prehistory until the Middle Ages , the Wantsum Channel was joined by
837-521: The old regime is another issue of toponymy. Also, in the context of Slavic nationalism , the name of Saint Petersburg was changed to the more Slavic sounding Petrograd from 1914 to 1924, then to Leningrad following the death of Vladimir Lenin and back to Saint-Peterburg in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union . After 1830, in the wake of the Greek War of Independence and
868-486: The ongoing development of a geographical names database and associated publications, for recording and disseminating authoritative hard-copy and digital toponymic data. This data may be disseminated in a wide variety of formats, including hard-copy topographic maps as well as digital formats such as geographic information systems , Google Maps , or thesauri like the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names . In 2002,
899-593: The outstanding scholars of the English language in the first half of the 20th century. He wrote works on the history of English, but he is best known as the author of numerous important books on English place-names (in the broadest sense) and personal names . His chief works in this area are The Place-Names of Lancashire (1922), English Place-Names in -ing (1923, new edition 1961), English River Names (1928), Studies on English Place- and Personal Names (1931), Studies on English Place-Names (1936), Street-Names of
930-441: The term place-name in professional discourse among geographers . Toponyms can be divided in two principal groups: Various types of geographical toponyms (geonyms) include, in alphabetical order: Various types of cosmographical toponyms (cosmonyms) include: Probably the first toponymists were the storytellers and poets who explained the origin of specific place names as part of their tales; sometimes place-names served as
961-522: The waters. These ultimately failed, and as a result Sandwich is now some distance from the sea. Regarding the northern end of the Channel, it has been estimated that the Roman fort at Reculver was originally about 1 mile (1.6 km) from the sea to the north, but by 1540, when John Leland recorded a visit there, the coastline to the north had receded to within little more than a quarter of a mile (400 m). It may be that sediment from this erosion contributed to