Torpenhow Hill

Torpenhow Hill

Torpenhow Hill is at http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=54.740126,-3.234023&spn=0.025,0.025&t=m&q=54.740126,-3.234023

The hill's main claim to fame is that its name is supposed to be a tautology: "Tor", "pen", and "how" are all said to mean "hill" in different languages (Old English, Welsh, and Danish, respectively), so that a literal translation of "Torpenhow Hill" would be "Hillhillhill Hill". It is assumed that successive residents of the area took the previous residents' name for the hill and added their own.

However, it is not clear that any of this is true. First, while there is a village in Cumbria called Torpenhow, there does not appear to be any hill by that name in England; if there is a hill by that name near the village, it would appear to be a nonce name after the village, not a long-standing name passed down from language to language. There are also various proposals for the meanings of the elements of the name, none of which are exactly "hill": Tor may be from British torr "peak", a word used in English to this day as tor, and pen from British penn "head", so Torpen may have been a British compound name, "head peak". The how, with historic variant spellings oc (Torpenoc) and oh (Torpenoh), appears to be Dano-English how(e), hough "hillock, tumulus", so that Torpenhow would mean "Headpeak hillock".

The local pronunciation of Torpenhow Village is /trəˈpɛnə/, though the more intuitive pronunciation /ˈtɔrpənhaʊ/ is in wider use.

See also

• Blennerhasset and Torpenhow
• List of tautological place names
• Cumbrian placename etymology

External links

• The Debunking of Torpenhow Hill