Forest of Dean question

[geoff_bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "zanooda2" <zanooda2 at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "geoff_bannister" <gbannister10@> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Quite frankly, if you are translating some text into 
> > another language, I would leave a name like this as it is.
> 
> 
> zanooda:
> 
> I suppose so, but this is not my call, because it's not me who does the translation, and if they decide to go with translation, I can't do anything :-). Besides, if a name includes words like "forest", both methods (translation and transcription) seem to be acceptable, I checked on the russian search engine. 
> 
> The problem with "Forest of Dean" is that in their translation it sounds as if "dean" is a person (you can tell because we have cases in our language:-)), and I say they shouldn't write it like this unless we are absolutely sure that it's true. That's why I was trying to find out what "dean" might mean here :-).

Geoff:
Some dictionaries suggest 'dean' as an alternative spelling of 'dene' 
which is a 'deep wooded valley'. There are other examples of this usage
- ones which come immediately to mind are Rottingdean, Saltdean and 
Woodingdean, near Brighton on the South coast.

But you can hardly translate the name as 'Forest of the Valley'; it sounds 
rather weird. It actually lies between the Wye Valley and the Severn Valley 
which are major rivers in the west and is on higher ground although there 
may be small deans/denes running down, particularly to the Severn on the 
east side.

Your turn to serve.
:-)