Translations of HBP - how the names are translated

[orzchis]

No: HPFGUIDX 144960

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Maureen <mjf152 at y...> wrote:
 
> Little Whinging - whinge means to whine and moan and complain - 
> sounds a bit like a few residents there.

It also sounds like quite a few real English towns -- like Barking or
Reading, or one of the various Chippings like Chipping Norton or
Chipping Campden or Chipping Sodbury (where JKR was born).  (Chipping
just means "market town"*, & thus isn't really like those others.  I
think the other -ings, even though they sound the same, come from a
different origin, being originally tribe or kindred names [like
Scyldings in Beowulf, or Eorlingas in Rohan for that matter].)

(*Like the various "Kaupangers" in Norway, which is a related word, as
is the German verb "kaufen."  A Chapman sells Cheap things, which
might include Chap-books -- three more related English words.)

"Little" commonly gets stuck to town names to distinguish them from an
adjoining bigger town of the same name.  A Google search I just did
turned up Little Stainton and Little Fontmel.

Anyway Little Whinging is extra-clever on several levels.

P. G. Wodehouse (as in Jeeves & Wooster) used lots of bizarre English
town names in his stories, but ... I _think_ ... they are all real,
like Weston-super-Mare and Walsingford Parva and Totleigh-in-the-Wold.
 Or maybe they aren't?

Sandy Straubhaar