Torpenhow Hill

rdf:langString Torpenhow Hill

rdf:langString yes

rdf:langString August 2021

rdf:langString Torpenhow Hill (locally /trəˈpɛnə/, trə-PEN-ə) is claimed to be the name of a hill near the village of Torpenhow in Cumbria, England, a name that is a quadruple tautology. According to an analysis by linguist Darryl Francis and locals, there is no landform formally known as Torpenhow Hill there, either officially or locally, which would make the term an example of a ghost word. The name is an example of "quadruple redundancy" in tautological placename etymologies (such as the Laacher See's "lake lake" and the Mekong River's "river river river"). Tor, pen, and how can all mean "hill" in different languages (torr from Old English, penn from Old Welsh and haugr from Old Norse) so that a literal translation of "Torpenhow Hill" would be "Hill-hill-hill Hill", in an extreme example of a multilingual tautological place name.It was used as a convenient example for the nature of loanword adoption by Thomas Comber in c. 1880. The idea of a "Torpenhow hill" apparently goes back to Thomas Denton (1688) who may have invented it. He noted that Torpenhow Hall and church stand on a 'rising topped hill', which he assumed might have been the source of the name of the village. The current village of Torpenhow is on the side of a hill rather than at the top. Modern etymological reference works interpret the name of Torpenhow as indeed derived from the three elements mentioned, but tor+penn is not interpreted as a tautology, but rather as expressing the idea of "top or breast of a hill", to which howe was added in a single tautology. Several online mapping services mark the hill near Torpenhow village as "Torpenhow Hill", even though interviewed locals have never used that name. In February 2021, YouTuber Tom Scott released a video discussing the hill and its name.