Things you’ve only just found out

[TheChosenTwo]

About 2 days ago I discovered that Skegness isn’t in Scotland 😳 How did I never know this before? Embarrassingly, I’m 38 😂

As a child, I thought the Lake District was called the Late District and it had been too late to become part of Scotland. I was really sad that it was forced to stay in England.

Orford Ness, Suffolk
Dungeness, Kent
Sheerness, Kent

It's not surprising that bits of placenames all over the UK still have remnants of older languages in them. Even when people stopped speaking Celtic languages and moved over to Anglo-Saxon, they probably didn't change the placenames, at least not all at once. Then gradually a few old names got displaced by newer Anglo-Saxon or Viking or Norman French names, and we end up with the mishmash we have now.

Dunkirk sounding Scottish is no surprise given that it's an Anglicised Flemish name, as explained a long way upthread. Flemish is a Germanic language, and so are English and Scots. Kirk/kirche/church all come from the same root.

Same

Many years ago, my sister had a book of problem page letters from Mizz or More or one of those magazines. She was looking through it and said to me “Why do they keep using the name Ainan?” [Pronounced to rhyme with Aidan] I was completely confused and asked what she meant. She said, “The false names they use for these letters - they keep using Ainan. Ainan from Hull, Ainan from Bristol… I’ve never even heard this name before!”

I asked to see the book. I looked at one of them and said, “Yeah… that says ‘Anon’. As in ‘anonymous’”.

I live in Northern Ireland. I was speaking to a neighbour who was going to Donegal for a holiday. I said we never go down south. She said Donegal was north. I checked on the map and she was right!

Yes, you go west to Donegal from most of the province of Norther Ireland.

You are kidding me !
You didn't know that the 6 counties in Northern Ireland have a neighbouring county to the west of Derry on the Atlantic seaboard called Donegal ?
What kind of geography classes did you have in primary school ?
Was the whole of the Republic expunged from maps of the British Isles.

Yeh but technically it's still part of Southern Ireland. There's Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland ie The Republic of Ireland so we always say down south when talking about anywhere in the Republic.

Northern Ireland is a country. Ulster is a province

I don't think finding places on a map or globe has been a feature of geography teaching in UK schools for decades now. I am in my early 60s and went to very traditional schools, and even I didn't get drilled in this. I did pick a lot of it up in my youth by looking at maps on the TV news and because I just like maps and atlases. I'm interested in history and that's a strong incentive to find out where places are. Childhood holidays were all in the UK, which also helped with knowing where places are in this country.

Did I say otherwise?

Geography when I was in school was about rocks, layers of the earth, most well-known volcanoes, major capital cities, continents, trade and transport. We weren't taught about where cities were on the map. We just knew which country they were in and where that country was. It wasn't a big part of geography.

Yes, the thing is, 'Northern Ireland' is the official name of the province, a proper name, so capital N, capital I, but 'southern Ireland' is just an informal phrase that people often use to mean the rest of the island of Ireland. (that is, the Irish Republic), and it's not compulsory, or even all that common, to start 'southern' with a capital S.

Yeh you said from most of the province of Northern Ireland

Yes.

It's very common in N.Ireland to put a capital S on Southern and Northern Ireland is a country

Pls don't say southern Ireland, capital letters or not. It really really pisses off Irish people, implying their country is defined only by proximity to a UK territory. Just giving you some advice for future reference!

Northern Ireland is variously described as a 'country', a 'province', or a 'statelet'. Whether one is more suitable than another is a matter of political standpoint, I think.

When the island first split it's legal name was Southern Ireland with capital letters and it is still used today. It's nothing offensive just people using the original name

Fair enough. I'll agree to disagree

I know its not meant to be offensive but just be warned it can be seen that way. I think it was a name only used during free state years before the Republic was formed. Its like saying you are going to Frankfurt in West Germany

It's very common in N.Ireland to put a capital S on Southern

No, it's not, and it's wrong to do that. Northern Ireland is a country and it is a province within the island of Ireland. People say "the south" and "down south" because they mistakenly think that because they are "Northern Ireland" then everything that is part of them is in the north, and everything that is not part of them must be in the south.

No one in Ireland calls it south/southern. That isn't its name. No capital S.

It's very common. And it's not wrong, like I said to someone else, it's just using it's original name. It's whatever you grew up with. Like Holland/Netherlands

Southern Ireland was only a state for less than two years before it became the Irish Free State and it's been just Ireland for nearly 90 years. So it's not really an argument.

And Holland and The Netherlands are not the same thing to be used interchangeably either.

This also isn't true. The only time it was called Southern Ireland was when it was under British rule and it only last for a year or so until everyone sorted their shit out and it then became the Irish Free State and then the Republic of Ireland.