Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Thu Apr 23 23:49:10 UTC 2009


At 4/23/2009 05:15 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Kari Castor <castor.kari at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
>You're probably thinking of
>Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantys=
>iliogogogoch.
>I have photos of the railway station sign buried somewhere at home, but I'm
>on campus, so it'll have to be Wikipedia to the rescue right now:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
><<<
>
>Which redirects to the more typeable and less breakable page URL
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
>where we are helpfully told:
>
> >>>
>The village's long name cannot be considered an authentic
>Welsh-language toponym. It was artificially contrived in the 1860s to
>bestow upon the station the honour of having the longest name of any
>railway station in the United Kingdom: an early example of a publicity
>stunt.

"Early" -- really?

>The village's own web site credits the name to a cobbler from
>the local village of Menai Bridge. According to Sir John Morris-Jones
>the name was created by a local tailor, whose name he did not confide,
>letting the secret die with him.
><<<
>
>My sister brought me back a baseball cap from there, so I can
>literally have Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
>runnin' all around my brain.

Did you have a swelled head before or after?  And Andrea Morrow must
have a very loooong coffin in her basement.

Joel

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