People who refuse to say "Lake Windermere"

Lake Windermere is one of the most peaceful, scenic and relaxing places I have ever been to. It even (finally) gained Unesco World Heritage status recently. The only thing that spoils it, is the people there who insist on saying, "It isn't 'Lake Windermere'. It's just 'Windermere.' The 'mere' bit means 'lake', so you don't say it."

Wrong. That's not how English works.

Windermere is also a town resides near the lake. You can call it "Windermere Town" if you like. For some reason, no-one minds you doing that.

"Mere" is an Old English word meaning "lake". The Old English equivalent of "town" is tun (from which we get the -ton suffix in place-names such as Longton, Boston and Ashton). So using the inane pseudo-logic of people who insist on dropping the "lake" bit when referring to Lake Windermere, you would have to call the town Winderton. But you don't, because that would be stupid. Embellishing the name with a description like "lake", or "town", or "bus service" helps distinguish things with the same name. Anyone with a basic grasp of English or even just common sense can tell you that.

And what of Pendle Hill, one of which is in Lancashire? "Pen" and "-dle" both originate from words meaning "hill", so literally it means "hill of the hill hill". So do we 'correct' the situation and start calling it Pen? Or perhaps just Hill? No, because Pendle is the name of the area, and Pendle Hill is a hill in that area. That's how place-names work. There are many other examples.

Lakes across the world follow the same pattern, which just shows up the madness even more. In Scotland, you have Loch Lomond and Loch Ness. In England, you have Haweswater Reservoir and Chew Valley Lake. Further afield we have Lake Ontario and Bear Lake in the US, and Reindeer Lake in Canada. I'm sure they were named that way because it made sense.

It's always interesting to note the psychology of people, and a prime target group is those who live in a particular area and insist on some oddity, such as pronouncing their place-names in a weird way. "No, it isn't that, it's this". Some of the time, this is useful: Getting things right avoids ambiguities and complexities in communication that cause avoidable misunderstanding. A while back, I was called a "grammar Nazi" for pointing out that someone meant "e.g.", although they had said "i.e.". But this wasn't me being a stickler for the sake of it. He was giving an example of something, not describing the only possibility. The two words have very different meanings, and consequently, the reasult was that various people thought he was saying something different. However, in the case of place-names, it seems that people who believe they own them change them just to appear to be different.

Humans like to belong to clubs, whether it's societies, sports, guilds, mobs, whatever. While for a few this is all about a feeling of belonging, or dedicating themselves to something they believe in, the underlying reason is usually one of ego: "I'm better than you". And changing something arbitrarily, so that you can put yourself in a position to correct others, is one (childish and pathetic) way of putting on a display to this effect.

But in the end, it's just a meaningless pretence. You'd have thought the inhabitants would be content enough to live near such an idillic spot. The same goes for Buttermere and Grasmere. (The towns, that is, not the lakes. If only there were some way of distinguishing the two, so that you know what I'm talking about...) As far as I can tell, all these arbitrary rule-breakers are in Cumbria... perhaps the area just attracts that type of mentality?

Go ahead, call it "Lake Windermere" next time you're there. Annoy the locals. They deserve no less.