Читать книгу The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between - Patrick Foote - Страница 14

Is there anything humans love doing more than having a good stare at things? I know that I have spent a good while mindlessly staring at pretty useless things and felt sufficiently satisfied. So you can only imagine how long I have spent staring at amazing things! Sometimes something is so amazing to gawk at that people from all over the world come to stare at it, touch it, take photos with it, and buy tacky souvenirs. These are also known as the landmarks of the world. Some are formed by nature, and some are formed by the hands of humans, but all (well at least the ones in this book) have interesting names.

THE EIFFEL TOWER

The Eiffel Tower certainly is an eyeful (I’m so sorry), but how did it get its name? The Eiffel Tower came into existence to be the centerpiece of the Exposition Universelle which means “World’s Fair.” This World’s Fair was to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution and over 100 artists submitted plans for what should go on the Champ-de-Mars in central Paris. The winning plan belonged to the construction and consultation firm Eiffel et Compagnie which was run by acclaimed architect Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel.

Eiffel (the man, not the building) had been building and designing structures and bridges for some time before his tower in Paris. This included the Budapest-Nyugati Railway Terminal in Hungary in 1877, the Garabit Viaduct in France in 1884, and the Statue of Liberty, gifted to the USA in 1878. Yet it was his tower in the center of Paris that he gave his own name to in 1889. This lead to the name we all know today, the Eiffel Tower.

Gustav only constructed the Statue of Liberty but designed and constructed the Eiffel Tower. Still, having involvement in the two most iconic landmarks on Earth isn’t too shabby is it? Millions come to Paris every year to see the Eiffel Tower. It’s loved by many, but to others, not so much. Perhaps the most famous example of someone who despised it was the writer Guy de Maupassant. He allegedly hated the sight of the tower so much he often ate lunch underneath it, as it was the only place in Paris where it couldn’t be seen. Logical.

BIG BEN

Have you ever stopped and thought for a minute just what a ridiculous name Big Ben is? It’s the kind of name you’d call a prize winning bull or something. Yet the name Big Ben belongs to the most iconic landmark in the United Kingdom!

But what exactly am I talking about when I say Big Ben? Well, if you’re thinking of the whole tower with the clock face on it, then you are wrong. This is a commonly known thing here in the UK, but I shall explain for the unfamiliar. Big Ben is the name for the biggest bell that rings along with the corresponding time of day. The actual tower that houses Big Ben did not have an official name when it was first built in 1844. From 1844 until 2012, the tower was simply called the Clock Tower. Yet in 2012 an official title was given to it, Elizabeth Tower, to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

So now that we’ve cleared up the whole Big Ben bell-not-building debacle, we can look into the name itself. There’s a couple ideas as to how the bell got that silly name. One is that it was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, Welsh civil engineer and politician. He was a large, well beloved man in the Houses of Parliament, playing a big role in the construction and installation of the bell itself. It makes a lot of sense for the bell to be named after him, but there’s another idea that it was named after popular English boxing champion of the time, Ben Caunt, who was also nicknamed Big Ben.

Whether it was named after a politician or a boxer, Big Ben is the name that has stood the test of time. It’s a rather silly name, from a rather silly country.

MOUNT RUSHMORE

I was going to talk about the Statue of Liberty, but we kind of covered it with the Eiffel Tower and its name isn’t that interesting—it’s a statue…of liberty. So instead, let’s look at Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln, the four presidents carved into the granite of Mount Rushmore.

Now, Mount Rushmore isn’t exactly a mountain. It’s something known as a batholith, and without this becoming a geology book, that means it is a kind of rock formation that most characteristically has a side that is more or less flat. Well, flat compared to a normal mountain. The kind of flat surface that would be perfect for sculpting enormous faces into.

Yet before the presidents got their faces on there, the batholith was still called Mount Rushmore. In fact, this is a kind of Big Ben tower vs. bell scenario. The batholith is called Mount Rushmore and the sculpting on its side is called the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, so maybe not as confusing as Big Ben. Mount Rushmore was named not after the person who first discovered the mountain (yes, for ease I’m just calling it a mountain now) nor the person who first reached its peak. Mount Rushmore was named after a New York based lawyer, Charles Rushmore.

Charles was in the land in 1884, hired by some men of the Black Hills to settle a dispute over tin mines. Years later, in 1925, as plans for the memorial were falling into place Charles Rushmore sent a letter to Doane Robinson (the man who conceived the idea of the memorial) explaining how his name ended up being used to name the mountain. In his letter, he explained how one day during his time working in the black hills, he gazed upon the “mountain of granite rock that rose above the neighboring peaks” and when he asked the locals (who he had become friendly with) what it was called, they explained that it was nameless, and they named it there and then, Rushmore Peak. From there, the name went from Rushmore Peak, to Rushmore Mountain, to Rushmore Rock, with Mount Rushmore finally being settled upon.

Yet in 1925, when this letter was sent, construction hadn’t even started! It wouldn’t be till 1927 when carving on the mountainside would begin. Initially, Doane Robinson wanted it carved on some granite pillars known as the Needles, but sculptor Gutzon Borglum felt that they wouldn’t have enough to support the carvings, so Rushmore was chosen instead.

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE

If you were in Berlin and knew very little about the history of the Cold War, then you might get very confused as to why so many people are staring, taking photos of, and crowding around a small white box. Well, it’s not because the Doctor has showed up in Berlin and painted his box from blue to white. It would be because they are all staring at Checkpoint Charlie.

Checkpoint Charlie came into existence with the Berlin Wall and the Cold War. Now, for those who don’t know about the Cold War, I shall try to explain it as easily as possible. The Cold War was basically the tension that grew between the US and Russia in the fallout of World War II. With Germany being caught in the middle of it all (what with Hitler in WWII and everything), this led to the nation being split into two countries, East and West Germany. The city of Berlin was also split into two, East and West Berlin.

East Berlin and West Berlin was divided by the infamous Berlin Wall. While this cut off life between the two for the everyday person, officials and others still had to cross between the two sides of the city. That’s where checkpoints came into play. These checkpoints were merely official crossing points between the two sides. There were multiple of these checkpoints throughout the city, but the most central of them (well, it would have been in central Berlin before the city got split up) became the most famous. Western Allies called this one Checkpoint Charlie, coming from the official NATO phonetic alphabet in which C equals Charlie. There was also a checkpoint Bravo.

As time went on, western allies grew more affectionate to Checkpoint Charlie, so much so that after the fall of the Berlin Wall the original hut was torn down, but when they realized it’s historical value a replica was thrown up. Hey, a replica landmark is still a landmark right?

MOUNT EVEREST

The Burj Khalifa is pretty big. At 2,722 feet it’s the tallest building on Earth. So yes, while that is pretty tall, Mount Everest is 29,029 feet tall, making it the highest point on Earth!

Before being branded Mount Everest, the mountain went by a couple of different names, and still does to this day. In Nepali it is called Sagarmāthā and in Tibetan it is called Chomolungma. In my opinion these names are much prettier than the one we in the English speaking world associate with it. The Nepali name of Sagarmāthā means “Forehead in the Sky” and its Tibetan name Chomolungma means “Mother of the World” which I think we can all agree on are better names that Mount Everest.

So why is the name we ended up with in English then? This name was given to the mountain when it was “discovered” in 1852 by the British-sponsored Great Trigonometrical Survey. Upon realizing that what they had discovered was not just a big mountain, but the biggest mountain on Earth, they needed to name it. It was the leader of the Survey, Andrew Waugh, who decided to name the mountain after the previous leader of the Survey, Sir George Everest.

When George Everest heard, however, that this colossus of a mountain had been named after him, he was not honored at all. Rather, he was embarrassed. George had spent so much of his life on the Survey team in India that he felt all discoveries should maintain their native names and not have names of English language origins thrown onto them. Though we now know that the mountain had a native name at the time of its discovery by the British (two in fact!), they didn’t know of these names at the time. Not only did they not know of them, but the Nepalese banned the Survey team from entering their country! With no known native name, and despite his fear that the natives wouldn’t be able to say his name, George Everest stopped fighting against it and let the mountain be called Mount Everest. Poor George died around a year after the mountain was named after him and we don’t know if he even got to see it with his own eyes.

K2

From the biggest mountain in the world to the second biggest mountain in the world. While it might get overshadowed by Everest, being the second best is still pretty good though, right? But how did such a feat of nature end up with such a human, unnatural, almost robotic, name?

K2 is located on the China-Pakistan border and once again we have a British Surveyor to thank for its name. This time it’s a man by the name of T.G. Montgomerie who was exploring the Karakoram Mountain Range, and as he surveyed mountains he numerically named them, adding a K before their number to reference the fact he was in the Karakoram Mountain Range. With K2 being the second mountain he recorded, it was that name that stuck with it to this very day!

However, as with Mt. Everest, there are other native names for this mountain too. In China, the mountain is called Qogir which means “white goddess,” and in Pakistan it is called Chogori meaning “tall majestic.” Another name that the mountain is most known by is “the Savage Mountain” due to the high amount of fatalities that have occurred while among those trying to traverse the mountain. There have only been around 300 successful summits of K2, but while that might seem like a lot, over 7,000 people have reached the summit of Everest! K2 has taken over seventy lives, the second most of any mountain. So it’s the second tallest, second most fatal, and second to be surveyed. Poor K2, always getting silver.

And yes there is a K1, and a K3, K4, and K5 for that matter! Yet K2 is the one that has gone down in infamy.

TAJ MAHAL

The Taj Mahal was not only constructed by the hands of 20,000 workers, but also with the assistance of 1,000 elephants! All those hands (and trunks) went into building one of the most impressive and beautiful buildings on this planet. In fact, it was deemed so beautiful that one legend tells us the architects had their hands cut off once the building was complete, so they couldn’t construct anything more beautiful.

Its construction was finished in 1653, making it over 350 years old! Unfortunately, a clear etymology has been lost, but some ideas and myths live on as to how this palace got its name. One of the more common stories is that the building was constructed as a mausoleum for one of the wives of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their fourteenth child. She was Shah’s third and favorite wife, said to be of extreme beauty and forever devoted to her emperor husband. Her death hit him hard. With a broken heart and an empire at his fingertips, the Taj Mahal was constructed for her, as an ode to his love, with the mausoleum still bearing her name today.

The second story behind the buildings name is not as romantic (or polygamous for that matter). It’s also thought that the name comes from the Persian language. In that the word Taj means “crown” and Mahal means “place” so Taj Mahal together would mean “the Crown Place.” Like I said, it’s nowhere near as exciting.

If we return to the myth that the architects’ hands were cut off after the completion of the building, what’s interesting about this is there was a similar tale in Russia. Legend has it that Ivan the Terrible blinded the architects of Saint Basil’s Cathedral, so they wouldn’t create anything more beautiful either. While not about names, I just thought I’d mention it if any of you were considering a career in architecture. I’m sure the salary and pension are great, just maybe consider that the loss of body parts could be a real possibility.