this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 20 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It's like when I see a place named "Westmoreland" I'm like "Ok, so someone thought, "there's more land west of where I was, and I'm not very creative".

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 days ago

if you dig deep enough that's what almost all place names are, and as stupid as it feels it's a great way to make fantasy place names feel not stupid.

There are a series of cities on the northeastern coast of sweden that all lie near the mouth of a long river, and those cities are quite literally named [Name of the river valley]-stream, while the rivers themselves are named [Name of the river valley]-river. It's so profoundly stupid and yet no one ever thinks about it at all.
Luleå, on Lule älv. Piteå, on Pite älv. Umeå, on Ume älv. Etc etc..

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Wait until you find out about Greenland and Iceland!

[–] ElBarto@piefed.social 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 34 minutes ago)

Vexingly, not pronounced as new+found+land. Apparently it's something like Newfin-lan, with a stress on the first syllable.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

or New York

new york (2) final.docx

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

new york (2) final.docx

Lol. I would need several extra hands to count the number of times I've had people email me documents with filenames like Copy of new york (2) REVISED-final(1).docx

if you need some extra fingers, you can just ask AI to generate some for you ;-)

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Give Greenland is mostly ice I'm actually curious to know where it's name comes from

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Supposedly, its and Iceland's discoverers named them thus to trick potential future conquerors into going for the wrong one.

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago
[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 days ago

It could be a bastardization of moorland, a type of shrubby biome similar to heath