When I wrote the first part of this post, I had a pretty good idea what the second part would con­tain. How­ever, re­searching the more ob­scure ‑wegian words turned out to be more time con­suming than first anti­cipated, as some of them do not appear in any dictionary. Per­haps, I should have ex­pected that, since these demo­nyms are the product of linguistic creativity and not governed by any set rules.

To re­cap, in the first part, I asked my­self: How many words end in ‑wegian? Where does this ending come from? And why does it lend itself to other seemingly un­related place names so easily?

We left off half-way through the British place names, so with­out further ado:

The British and Hibernian sort (cont’d)

Place names ending in ‑wick

Ler­wick

One place name ending in ‑wick takes the ending ‑wegian. This is sur­prising at first, be­cause ‑wick is not the same as the ‑way of Nor­way and Gal­way. But per­haps an ex­plan­ation can be found in the history of the place.

Ler­wick, the biggest town of the Shet­land Islands, is a Scandi­navian settle­ment—much like Storno­way, which we dis­cussed in the pre­vious post. It was originally called some­thing akin to Leir­vík, meaning “mud bay” or “clay cove” in Old Norse². In Scots, it is called Lerook, Lerrick among other names³. And in Scottish Gaelic, the name is Learaig or Liùra­bhaig⁴, which both end in a g. So per­haps it is this similarity in sound com­bined with the scandi­navian history that led to calling the in­habitants Ler­wegians⁵.

But again, the ending ‑vík “bay” or “cove” is not the same as ‑vegr “way”, which gave us the original ‑wegian ending. So this is another creative neo­logism.

Place names ending in ‑gow and ‑ow

Glas­gow

Glas­gow was the place name that started this search. But with the Scottish Gaelic name Glas­chu⁶, the Scots name Gles­ga⁷, and the Latin name Glas­covium⁸ or Glas­quum⁹, it makes little sense to call the in­habitants Glas­wegians¹⁰. Naturally, they haven’t al­ways been called that. The earlier word was Glas­gower¹¹, which takes a more traditional ending.

At first, I thought Glas­wegian might be the result of a meta­thesis (i.e. swapping) of the g and w of Glas­gow, giving us something like Glas­wog, which could more easily take the ending in analogy with Nor­wegian. Of course, that would be a rather radical change, but we saw some­thing similar with Gal­way, which came from Gail­limh → Gal­liva → Gal­via. And it could very well be part of the slangy word­play that seems to be pre­sent in all of these ‑wegian words. But, as it turns out, there was a transitional form: Glas­go­wegian^13,14. This eliminates the need for any meta­thesis, as the end result can be ex­plained as a simple shor­tening of the word—losing the un­stressed syllable go.

A recent 2019 addition to the Ox­ford English Dictionary even gives us the word Weegie¹⁵ (also spelled Weedjie and Weedgie), which is a playful shor­tening of the word. Here, the ending has be­come such a central part of the identity that all parts of the place name can be left out entirely.

Bow

The Bow district in Lon­don can also take the ending. But it seems the word Bowegians has only been used once by George Bernard Shaw¹⁶—and he does not speak too kindly of them, so per­haps it is meant to be de­ro­ga­tory.

But a list of words that end in ‑wegian would not be com­plete with­out it, even if it is what the lexi­co­graphers of the Ox­ford English Dictionary call a nonce-word—a word made up for a par­ti­cular occasion. It also proves, along with the word Glas­go­wegian, that a place name only needs to end with the letter w to qualify for having the suffix ‑wegian appended to it.

The Australian sort

As promised, we now go to the southern hemi­sphere to look at some truly novel uses of the ‑wegian suffix. At this point, all con­sider­ations of the origin of the place name, its neo-Latin name, and even the pre­sence or lack of the letter w fail to ex­plain the choice of suffix.

Bris­bane

You might call a per­son from Bris­bane a Bris­banian¹⁷ or a Bris­banite¹⁸. And you wouldn’t think that ‑wegian could be applicable here, seeing that the name’s ending bears no re­sem­blance to the ‑way of Nor­way or even in­cludes a w. But even then, you will some­times find the word Bris­wegian¹⁹ used in re­fer­ence to the people of the capital of Queens­land, Australia.

Tas­mania

The usual word for a per­son from Tas­mania is Tas­manian²⁰. But, as you can see from the dictionary entry, it can also refer to the (now ex­tinct) native population of the island. As an adjective, it is attached to a few animals and plants native to Tas­mania, such as the Tas­manian devil and the Tas­manian tiger.

For some reason or other, an in­habitant of Tas­mania can also be called a Tas­wegian²². Again, this is a com­pletely ir­regular use of the ending ‑wegian. But per­haps these two Australian demo­nyms use the ending to allude to a sense of Scandi­navian-ness or Northern European-ness.

Con­clusion

The slangy and play­ful nature of the words that end in ‑wegian makes it im­possible to make a com­plete list of them. As we have seen, only a speaker’s linguistic creativity limits the number of words that could be made of this suffix.

To sum up, this ending has its origin in one place name of Old Norse origin, trans­lated into Latin, and given the common demo­nymic suffix ‑an. That is to say: *Norð­vegr → Noꞃð­ƿeᵹe → Nor­vegia/Nor­wegia → Nor­vegius/Nor­wegius → Nor­wegian. From this form, a couple of port­man­teaux were created (Scandi­wegian, Sco­wegian), but this does not make the ending pro­ductive. Then, a number of place names in the British Isles began to add the ending analogously (Gallo­wegian, Gal­wegian, Storno­wegian). At this point, the ending seems to be an accep­table, if novel, way to make demo­nyms out of place names ending in ‑way. But I am not sure I would call it pro­ductive just yet.

Both of these leaps—from one word to a couple of port­man­teaux and the formation of the analogous rule ‑way → ‑wegian—are great and un­usual. But in my mind, the leap from a single rule to a few rules (‑wick → ‑wegian; ‑gow → ‑wegian; ‑w → ‑wegian) is the largest and weirdest. This is where the ending be­gins to show signs of pro­ductive­ness.

And the Australian uses (Bris­wegian, Tas­wegian) take the ending into new territories (if you will ex­cuse the pun), appending the suffix to any place name with­out regard for its origin or spelling. Now, I am sure that you could, in in­formal con­versation, put the suffix onto any place name and be under­stood.

It has even taken on a life of its own as the words ’Wegian²³ and Weegie, which are shor­tenings that leave only the ending of the word.

The reason for its popularity, I cannot know for sure, and it may be entirely co­inci­dental that it has been picked up by so many. But I think a few things have helped it along: The un­usual sound of the ending ‑wegian can have in­spired word­smiths to make amusing words out of it; and the association with Scandi­navians, and later Scots­men and Irish­men, can have brought along a mental image of a person from those areas (for better or for worse). In the case of Bowegian, Shaw stops just short of calling them un­cultured, but that meaning may lie in the ‑wegian suffix with a nod to the bar­baric Vikings. In the new world, it may serve to underline the Northern European heritage of the in­habitants. In any case, it is hard to say with these slang words for swathes of people, how many of them would proudly identify as a “some-place-wegian”, and how many would be offended by the appellation.

Over­view

I will leave you with an over­view of the place names and demo­nyms dis­cussed in these two posts. The words that end in ‑wegian are in bold.

Abbreviations: ig, Irish (Gaeilge); l, Latin; oe, Old English; on, Old Norse; pg, proto-Germanic; sg, Scottish Gaelic; ∅, no meaning.

What’s next?

As this post shows, there is no limit to the number of place names that could gain the ending ‑wegian, and I think we will see more of them in the future. Some ex­amples could be: a Yor­wegian from York, Eng­land, which was at one point called Jór­vík; a Whali­go­wegian or Whali­wegian from Whali­goe, Scot­land; or how about a Corrin­she­go­wegian or Corrin­she­wegian from Corrin­shego, Northern Ire­land?

I am sure, we will see much more creative uses than these, and I look forward to it.

Some­times, a word or phrase will strike me as odd, and I start wondering about its possible origin. Especially when the ex­planation seems to be some­what ob­scure or maybe non-existent.

For example the word Glas­wegian as the word for a person or dia­lect from Glas­gow. Why does it end in ‑wegian? The only other word with this ending that springs to mind is Nor­wegian, and it seems odd that a place name ending in ‑gow would abandon its final syllable and, in its place, take the same ending as a place name ending in ‑way.

So, how many words end in ‑wegian? Where does this ending come from? And why does it lend itself to other seemingly un­related place names so easily?

I will try to an­swer these questions, but it be­came too long for one blog post, so I have split it into two. Let’s begin at the origin.

The Scandi­navian sort

Norway

First of all, we might ask: Why is a person from Nor­way called a Nor­wegian? The g seems to appear out of no­where.

The ex­planation can be found in the origin of the name. It was originally com­posed of two elements in Old Norse: Norðr meaning “north” and vegr meaning “way”¹. In Old English the name of the Nordic country was borrowed (or directly trans­lated to) Norþ­weg or Norð­weg², and this spelling with a g gave rise to the modern latin­ization of the name to Nor­vegia. This makes the Latin adjective Nor­vegius or Nor­vegicus, which then leads to the English Nor­wegian³.

As an aside, I’d like to mention that the Nor­wegians don’t call them­selves Nor­wegians, but rather nord­menn (“north men”), and they speak norsk. This is in line with the other Scandi­navian countries, which have relatively simple demo­nyms, because the countries are named after their respective peoples: Den­mark is inhabited by Danes speaking Danish, and Sweden houses Swedish Swedes.

Scandi­navia as a whole

Now back to the issue of the ending’s use in other words. For some reason, Nor­wegian has fostered a couple of port­manteau slang words for Scandi­navians. For example, Scandi­wegian⁵ is just a silly way of saying Scandi­navian, which com­bines the first part of Scandi-navian with the second part of Nor-wegian.

There is even the word Scow­egian⁶, which is slang for a Scandi­navian sailor or vessel. Here, the first part scow is a word borrowed from Dutch schouw—a term for a type of boat⁷.

These are all the ‑wegian words that refer to Scandi­navians. But as we know, the ending is also applied to places outside of Scandi­navia. So let’s go to Great Britain and Ire­land.

The British and Hibernian sort

The British Isles have made the ending ‑wegian their own by attaching it to names of local places. Mostly these place names have an ending that looks similar to Norway’s, and the ending has been added in analogy to the word Nor­wegian.

It probably also helps that many of these places are in Scot­land and Ire­land, which have a history of Viking settle­ment. Not that the Scandi­navians brought their demo­nym with them (as noted, they didn’t use it them­selves), but rather that the English-speaking neigh­bours may have associated the places with Scandi­navians and could have been en­clined to use an ending they deemed suitably “Scandi­wegian”.

Place names ending in ‑way

The obvious analogy to Nor­way are place names that end in ‑way. For example Gallo­way, Gal­way and Storno­way.

Gallo­way

People from Gallo­way in Scot­land can be called Gallo­wegians or even Gal­wegians⁸. But the Latin name of the Scottish region is Gallo­vidia, so the in­habitants can also be called Gallo­vidians⁹.

In fact, the name doesn’t seem to have ever ended in a g. Its Scottish Gaelic name is Gall-Ghaidhea­laibh¹¹. Similarly, it is called Gall-gaidhil in Irish, and Gall­wyddel in Welsh⁹. This use of the ‑wegian ending is thus a re­pur­posing that doesn’t make etymo­logical sense, but sounds right to modern ears¹².

Gal­way

So, what are people from Gal­way in Ire­land called? It seems Gallo­way has taken all the variants for them­selves.

People from Gal­way are also called Gal­wegians¹³ (or, alter­natively, Galway­men and Galway­women). This can­not be ex­plained by the Irish name, which is Gaillimh¹⁴. The English name is derived from the Irish and was initially angli­cized as Galliv, Gallive, or Galliva in an effort to match the Irish pro­nun­ciation. But as time went on, the i and the v changed places (a pro­cess known as meta­thesis), giving the name Gal­via¹⁵. This is identical to its modern Latin name, so you could expect to see the word Gal­vians in reference to the in­habitants of Gal­way, but I haven’t been able to find that any­where. It seems then, that the ‑way of Gal­way is actually a mis­trans­lation of ‑via inter­preted as the Latin word for “road”. From this point, it is not a far stretch to apply the ending ‑wegian in analogy to Nor­wegian, because Nor­way ends with the same element.

Update (24 October 2019):
The rugby team in Galway is also called Galwegians, and their name can be shortened to ’Wegians¹⁶. This gives new life to the ending as a stand-alone word.

Storno­way

Storno­way on the Isle of Lewis in Scot­land may be the most sensible place name to use a demo­nym ending in ‑wegian (apart from Nor­way, of course). The word Storno­wegian, how­ever, is not common enough to appear in any of the dictionaries, I could get my hands on.

This town was actually founded by Vikings and called some­thing akin to Stjórna­vágr in Old Norse¹⁸. And the Scottish Gaelic name also re­tains a g in its spelling: Steòrna­bhagh¹⁹.

Of course, the ending ‑vágr, meaning “voe” or “inlet”, is not the same as ‑vegr, meaning “way”. So, once again, the ending is added in analogy.

Storno­way doesn’t appear to have a Latin name, so we can’t compare it to that. But Storno­wegian could lead to a back-formation to a neo-Latin name of Storno­vegia.

To be con­tinued...

Next time, I will take a look at some more place names, in­cluding some that end in ‑wick and ‑gow. I will also com­ment on the use of the ‑wegian ending in Australia.

Where is Irmnitz? The short answer can be found in the Danish poem, which is the only surviving source that mentions the place.

Hin føddæs i Irmnitz
en kald Decembris Nat
lithet nordheſth for Kransveſit.

In English:

They born were in Irmnitz
one cold December’s night
a little north east of Kransvesit.

[My translation]

The undated epic, of which this is an excerpt, was written in Old Danish by a scribe, who calls himself Siurbi Dwæ. The first name could be a variant of Sig(ur)bjørn “victory-bear”, and the second seems to be the nickname Due “dove”¹.

The poem tells us that Irmnitz is located “a little north east of Kransvesit”—another place name that is not known from any other source. It is also mentioned that december nights in Irmnitz are (or at least can be) cold. That rules out big swathes of the southern hemisphere.

Another detail, which is not directly evident from the excerpt, is that hin (they) refers to the epic’s hero: a large sea mammal, whose adventures take place at Elsinore and near Dogger Bank among other places. That narrows our search to the coasts.

Slavic origin?

From the description of the place, it is hard to pinpoint the location with any accuracy, and therefore, we must look at the possible origin of the place name. A good place to start is with the ending, which we can compare to other place names that we know. In this case the ending could be ‑itz or possibly ‑nitz.

That may look quite alien in a Danish context, but it could be the expression of an ending that we know from several towns in the area of Lolland-Falster, namely the ending ‑itse. In Danmarks Stednavne² (Denmark’s Place Names) you can read about the ending ‑itse that it is a “derivational suffix of Slavic (Wendish) origin”. It can be seen in the place names Kuditse, Tillitse, Binnitse and Korselitse among others. It also says:

In German sources from Mecklenburg and Holstein, originally Slavic place names ending in ‑ici are usually given as ‑iz(e), ‑itz(e) ever since the 12th century. [...] In German sources from the 12th and 13th centuries, the ending is almost always one syllable, while it is more often two syllables in later sources.

[My translation]

So ‑itz could be a version of the Wendish ending. In University of Copenhagen’s name of the month³ from September, the standardization of the spellings of these names is discussed.

But the ending can also be something else. For example, the place name Kramnitse is not of Wendish origin, although the present spelling might suggest it. According to Danmarks Stednavne (Denmark’s Place Names), it could be a combination of kram “market” or “goods” and hus “house” or næs “cape”. Since then, it has changed its spelling analogously to other place names in the area with the ending ‑itse.

And looking at the place name Irmnitz, it does have some similarities with Kramnitse, so it could also be originally Danish. But in order for the spelling to make sense, it would be more likely that it is in an area with a prevalence of other Wendish place names.

Lolland-Falster?

The Wends were a people from Eastern Europe, and from their legacy of Slavic place names it seems they settled in northern Germany and southern Denmark. There are references to the Wends in several Zealandic place names and places on the southern islands, but the ending ‑itse is only found on Lolland, Falster and Møn. So if Irmnitz is in Denmark, it is most likely on one of these islands.

But it could also be in Germany, because the Wends were also present in Holstein, Mecklenburg and Rügen. Some Slavic place names in this area include Grömitz (Holstein), Ribnitz (Mecklenburg) and Sassnitz (Rügen). And since we are looking for a place by the sea, it is plausible that Irmnitz lies somewhere along the southern coast of Denmark or the northern coast of Germany.

The latter may be more consistent with the spelling of Irmnitz.

If, like me, you like to look through the character picker in search of interesting, strange and curious symbols, then this blog series is for you. If not, you can revel in the fact that I have done the work for you, so you don’t need to open a character picker, let alone a word processor, to follow along. Because here, I will explain a few chosen symbols that you may stumble upon in your character selector, and tell you about their history and use and—as the title suggests—explain why they are no longer used.

My goal is to give the reader a little introduction to the part of the world of writing systems and typography that are not evident at first glance. In this first installment, I will talk about a letter, which has been in use within the borders of the Danish kingdom until 45 short years ago.

Forgotten letters № 1:

The letter kra (Kʼ ĸ)

When you open the character picker and scroll down from the basic latin alphabet from a to z, and past the Danish letters æ, ø and å, you find a list of letters with special diacritics. This is the character block that Unicode has dubbed “Latin extended-A”. Here you can find, among other things, the Polish letters ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ś, ź and ż. But for now, I am more interested in a character that doesn’t have little strokes, curves or dots added. And I am not talking about the Turkish dotless ı or the letter œ, which is a combination of an o and an e, or about the long ſ, which is a historical variant of s.

The lettet that I have wondered about is the small letter, which can be found between ķ and Ĺ. And when I use the word small, it is partly to describe the size, and partly because there is no capital version of the letter. Unicode calls the letter latin small letter kra and has given it the character code U+0138. The letter looks like this: ĸ. So it looks like a Greek kappa (κ, ϰ) or a Cyrillic ka (к), but it is a Latin letter.

Capital letters

It is unusual for a letter not to have a capital form, but it is not unprecedented. For most letters, the capital letter is the starting point, because the Latin alphabet originally only had one case, which looked like the one we call upper case today.

One exception is the German letter ß, which was historically a ligature of two sʼs or sz (or rather ſs „ſs“ or ſz „ſz“, which became ß „ß“), which is why it is also called eszett. It started life as a lower case letter, and until very recently, there was no capital version of the letter, because no words start with the letter. And if you write German in all caps—that is, if you really want to get your message across—you can replace the ß with SS without any major change in meaning.

But there are letters that can be capitalized, eventhough they do not start any words. In Faroese and Icelandic, for example, the letter ð is never the first letter of a word, but the capital letter Ð still exists for historical reasons. This is just one of the arguments that lead to the capital eszett ẞ being added to the Unicode standard in 2008. And in 2016, the Council for German Orthography (Rat für deutsche Recht­schreibung) made the letter official². Consequently, it is now optional, whether you write the word Straße in capital letters in the old way (STRASSE) or with the new capital letter (STRAẞE).

So what about the little kra ĸ that this blog post is about? How is it capitalized? It has to somehow distinguish itself from the capital K, and that is accomplished with an apostrophe, like this: Kʼ.

Usage

Enough about the letter’s appearance and what makes it different from other letters. What has it been used for? And why is it not used anymore? It was used to write the consonant that is called a voiceless uvular plosive, and is written /q/ in the international phonetic alphabet (IPA). This sound can be described as a k-sound, which is pronounced further back towards the uvula—a bit like how “kra” is pronounced in Danish or German.

The letter has been used to write Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) until the orthography reform of May 14, 1973⁴, and can still be found in texts, that don’t follow the reform. The reform replaced ĸ with q—which makes sense as it distinguishes it from a regular k and at the same time it is easier to write on a typewriter (or even a word processing machine).

Additionally, long vowels should no longer be written with a circumflex (â), but by doubling the vowel (aa), and long consonants no longer with an acute accent (ák), but by doubling the consonant (akk). The reform also made sure to spell words closer to their pronunciation (phonetically) and less dependent on their history. For example, the central word in the picture above ĸuláinalik is now written qulaannalik.

These changes have made it easier to learn to read and write Greenlandic—firstly because of the closer connection between pronunciation and spelling, and secondly because of the omission of special characters. But the old orthography is not less impressive for that reason. Samuel Petrus Kleinschmidt was a missionary and a linguist, and he created the first orthography for Greenlandic in the middle of the 1800’s. This orthography spread to the people, and ever since, the Greenlanders have had a rich written literature.

The letter is not completely forgotten yet. First of all, it exists in Unicode, which makes it possible for us to use it in digital text today. And I assume there are Greenlanders who insist on using the letter to this day. Today, the letter ĸ is only officially used in the dialect Inuttitut (also called Nunatsiavummiut), which is a dialect of Inuktitut spoken in northern Labrador in Canada.

Rønnebæk-Sibberup

– and other places that don’t want to be mistaken.^1,2

Rønnebæk-Sibberup is a long name for a little village southeast of Næstved in Denmark. And the name hasn’t always been so long. Before the 1900’s the town was known only as Sibberup, and the short name can still be used to refer to the village. So why would anyone mix in Rønnebæk in the first place?

The name “Sibberup” is thought to consist of the male given name Sibbi, which is short for Sig-bjørn, and the ending torp, which means hamlet or small village (corresponding to English thorp). When naming a hamlet, it is a very common formula to use the ending torp with a man’s name as the first component—that could be the name of the person, who built the first farm there. This fixed formula makes it hard to avoid similar place names, when multiple men bearing the name Sibbi descide to found hamlets all around the country and throughout history. And as it turns out, there are four different villages on the island of Zealand, who call themselves Sibberup.

The closest other village named Sibberup is 10 km away in Fensmark parish northeast of Næstved. In one source, this village is also called Holme-Sibberup. So, someone had found out that there was a risk of mistaking one of the villages for the other, and then they added Holme to the name in order to show that they were refering to the Sibberup, which lies close to the manor Holmegård. For the same reason, Rønnebæk has been added to the village, which is in Rønnebæk parish.

Parish towns

The Danish onomastics professor Bent Jørgensen has dubbed this phenomenon reciprocation, and that is the subject of his dissertation from 1977 of the same name (“Reciprokering” in Danish). Here he examines the reciprocations, that have been documented from older times—specifically from before 1688—and there are a lot of them. If a place name contains nørre “northern”, sønder “southern”, øster “eastern”, or vester “western”, it is most likely to differentiate themselves from another place by the same name. The same goes for lille “little”, store, magle, møgel all meaning “big”; ny “new”, gammel “old”; neder “lower”, and over “upper”, and this is far from a complete list.

A special family of reciprocations use another place name to disambiguate the place. It can be the name of nearby manors, villages or parish towns that are added—as seen in the example Sibberup. Those are usually old, but it can also be the names of islands or regions as in the best-known Danish example: Nykøbing Falster, Nykøbing Mors and Nykøbing Sjælland—three cities, whose names translate to “New Market Town”, in three different parts of the country: Falster, northern Jutland and Zealand, respectively.

The latter kind usually consist of towns that are further apart, and the addition to the name is usually also relatively new, since it has only recently become necessary to differentiate between the towns. And it is probably not random that it happens, after the railway stations have opened in the towns in question.

The railway

The development of the railway from the late 1800’s made it more important to be able to tell similar sounding place names apart. You wouldn’t want to buy a ticket for the wrong end of the country! There are many good examples from that time, and many of them come in pairs, such as Viby Jylland and Viby Sjælland in Jutland and Zealand, or Døstrup Himmerland and Døstrup Sønderjylland in northern and southern Jutland. But not all reciprocations are as clear-cut as these.

In northern Jutland there was a station, which has now been closed, by the name Vandet Thy, eventhough no other station bears the name Vandet. In this case, it was a station called Vandel southeast of Billund that caused a risk of confusion.

And at first glance, the station called Svenstrup Jylland looks like it might be the only one of its kind. But it is differentiating itself from a former station near Korsør by the name Svenstrup Sjælland Billetsalgssted. On top of that, we have Svenstrup Als, which was a station of the old railways on the island of Als.

What all of these stations have in common, is that they have a postcode bearing the same name with the same addition of region. That probably comes from the fact that mail delivery was formerly done by train and therefore use the same naming conventions. Among the postcodes we can also find many more examples of reciprokation.

Postcodes

Most postcodes with an added region pair up nicely. Take the pair Højby Sjælland and Højby Fyn. But there are also some that need further explanation.

Jystrup Midtsjælland stands out, because the latter part of the name translates to “mid-Zealand”, but there are no other towns on Zealand by the name Jystrup. However, there are three towns that call themselves Jyderup, so that is probably the cause of confusion. A similar case is Rødvig Stevns. It can potentially be mistaken for Rørvig in Odsherred on Zealand or Rødby on the island Lolland.

Since Denmark shares its postal service with the other countries in the realm—namely Greenland and the Faroe Islands—a name such as Godthåb Jylland has to be explained by potential confusion with Godthåb (also called Nuuk) in Greenland. And Klakring Jylland written quickly could be read as Klaksvig in the Faroe Islands, if you omitted the name of the region, Jutland.

The hardest name to explain is probably Veksø Sjælland. At first glance, you could think that the Swedish town Växjö could be a possible cause of confusion. But on the other hand, this would be confusion across borders and postal services, and they are spelled quite differently. A better option might be Nexø on the island of Bornholm, which rhymes with Veksø. And the difference between a capital N and a capital V lies in one stroke, and in earlier times it was more optional to spell the names with an x or a ks.

Is reciprocation still a thing—and why?

As mentioned, the railway and the postcodes are a newer development, and we see more and more of these reciprocations during the 1900’s. The newer reciprocations are also usually further apart than the old, and therefore, they use the names of regions or islands, where the older reciprocations often use parish names.

On top of that, it looks like some areas are more afraid of being mistaken than others. These areas include Thy and Als, that I have already mentioned shortly, but the islands of Lolland, Mors and Ærø are just as bad. You could theorise that, at first, these areas added their name to some of the place names that shared a name with a place somewhere else in the country, and since then they have become very aware of any potential confusion that a place name could cause. It could also be subconscious branding of their local identity—which could be especially good for the fringe areas.

Espressivo № 1, Linguistic tips for singers¹

Phonetic ter­minology has been abundant at choir practice lately, and there seems to be a bit of con­fusion about the words and their meanings. So I thought that I—as the linguist of the choir—would try to clear up this con­fusion.

An affricated t is a con­sonant that is pronounced by following the stop t with a short s-sound. In phonetic transcription it looks like this: [tˢ].

That is how we Danes pronounce t’s in the beginning of a syllable. Our choir’s name Tritonus [ˈtˢʁ̥itˢonus] contains two instances of this sound. But why do we call it affricated? What is the alternative?

Plosives

Let’s start at the beginning. The con­sonant t is a member of a family of sounds called plosives. A plosive is a con­sonant that is pronounced by briefly blocking the airflow from the lungs, so that air pressure increases in the mouth. This pressure is released all at once, and it sounds like a small ex­plosion—hence the name.

Plosives can be made in different places of the mouth. For ex­ample, you could block the airflow at the lips, and you would get the sound [p]. Or you could place the tip of the tongue behind your upper front teeth on the alveolar ridge and pronounce a [t]. You can also use the back of the tongue against the soft palate (velum), which results in a [k].

Aspiration

But plosives also have other properties. The Danish con­sonants p and b are both pronounced at the lips—what differentiates them is aspiration. The Danske p is written in the phonetic alphabet as [pʰ], and the little h represents the small puff of air that follows the ex­plosion. If you hold your hand in front of your mouth and say pa-pa-pa, you can clearly feel the puff. That is caused by a pause after the ex­plosion of the con­sonant before the glottis begins to oscillate.

If you say ba-ba-ba instead, there is not nearly as much air that escapes. That is because the glottis begins to vibrate immediately after the b ex­plodes. That is written in phonetic transcription as [b̥] and it basically corresponds to an un­aspirated p.

The little ring below the b means that the consonant is devoiced. That is, the voice box isn’t buzzing while the lips are closed and the pressure is building. There are also voiced b’s, and they are written without the ring: [b]. Danish doesn’t have this sound, but if you imagine an American saying Bob [bɑːb], you will have a good idea, what it sounds like.

So, different languages pronounce b and p differently. French, for example, has no aspiration at all, so they pronounce their capital Paris [pɑˈʁi]. That sounds almost like a Dane saying Bari [ˈb̥ɑːʁi], but in French that would be pronounced with a voiced b.

Affrication

Affrication is the addition of a fricative con­sonant. A fricative is a sound that is pronounced by hindering the airflow and creating turbulence—or friction, as the name suggests. That is the hissing sounds and those that sound like white noise: f [f], v [v], th [θ] or [ð], s [s], sh [ʃ], French j [ʒ], German ch [x] and many more.

A complete affricate is a con­sonant that consists of a plosive and a fricative, and they are written with a tie bar in phonetic notation: German z [t͡s], English ch [t͡ʃ] and English j [d͡ʒ] represent some of the most common consonants of the type.

In Danish, the t’s are affricated in their pronunciation, and that is not too far from the German z. That makes it easier for Danes to differentiate between t and d.

But since the Germans already have the consonant z [t͡s], it would be confusing, if they also pronounced their t’s [tˢ]. So they say [tʰ]—a “dry” t. That makes it easier for them to differentiate Tal [tʰɑːl] and Zahl [t͡sɑːl].

I hope you can find some sense in this madness, or that you have at least become confused on a higher level than before.