SEMANTIC ENIGMAS



The name Jerusalem means city of peace and Benidorm means sleep well. Are there other similarly ironic place names? "BENIDORM" doesn't mean dormir bien. It comes from the Arabic word "Beni" (meaning "sons of"), like a lot of other villages in Valencia (Benitachell, Benimuslin, Beniarres). They all are old Spanish-Musulman sites. Angel Ocon Gimenez, Valencia, Spain. BEDARIEUX, a sub-prefecture in the Herault department of France apparently means "Place of the Beetroot". Alan Sykes, Cumbria (alansykes@talkinhead.demon.co.uk) ACCORDING to The World's Most Bizarre Facts Ever (available with the second issue of Bizarre magazine), the noted Irish capital Dublin takes its name from the Gaelic words "Dubh Linn", which actually mean "Blackpool". James Wallis, London SW6 (jamesw@johnbrown.co.uk) PASSENGERS flying in to Kai Tak airport might question Hong Kong meaning "fragrant harbour" in Cantonese. Dan Coulcher, London (dancoulcher@ndirect.co.uk) I GREW UP in Buenos Aires, which means "good air": true, perhaps, in the 1500s when it was named, but not quite the grimy, humid air I remember. Alex Laidlow, London E2. BUENOS AIRES, literally "good airs", has nothing to do with the quality of the air we breathe - which isn't bad as big cities go because flat pampas and the River Plate, the widest in the world, help winds get rid of pollution. Before self-propelled ships, sailors had to depend on the right winds to reach their destination safely. So it was only fitting that, when the first Spaniards reached this (for them) remote place, they thanked the saint patron of seamen, Santa Maria de los Buenos Aires, or St Mary of the good winds, by baptising this city after her. Roberto Asseo de Choch, Buenos Aires. PHILADELPHIA, PA, is the "City of Brotherly Love", but you have a one-in-five chance of being the victim of a violent crime in any given year. P Sanderson, Glenloch, Philadelphia, US. RIO de Janeiro, in English, "January River", has no river. The Portuguese invaders named it after a river because they believed the large bay to be a river delta. The Indian name, Guanabara, means sea lagoon, and is more accurate a description of the bay. Andrew Stroud, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (britipa@iis.com.br) THOUGH there are mountains just outside Los Angeles, the cities of El Monte, Monterey Park and Montebello are all securely in the flatlands, while neighbours Claremont and Montclair are doubly ironic in that they are both in the flatlands and subject to the worst smog in the area. Tom Schneidermann, Washington DC. KUALA LUMPUR'S founders called it a "muddy rivermouth" in the Malay language, a description strangely more fitting a century on. The two small rivers that flow through KL have become little more than giant monsoon drains, conducting water which bears a disconcerting resemblance in colour to a cup of tea though smelling - and, I would suppose, tasting - much, much worse. Harvey Koh, Georgetown, Malaysia (htkk2@hermes.cam.ac.uk) NOT SO FAR from Jerusalem, and even more ironically named, lies the embattled town of Hebron. Its Arabic name, al-Khalil ar-Rahman, means "The Compassionate Friend". William Hamlin, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (hamlin1@compuserve.com) "Marbella", of course, means beautiful sea. Which is certainly true. However, I doubt the rather salubrious-looking hotel of the same name in Camberwell, South London, could be so described. Anthony Arto, London Los Angeles means the angels - ever met any there ? Montevideo : I'm looking from a mountain , but there are no mountains around. Uwe Junge, Niebuell, Germany The Uruguayans themselves do not have a clue about the origin of the name "Montevideo". There is a legend that in the first map of the region, the hill ("Monte" in Spanish) was the sixth ("VI") from ("de") east ("E") to west ("O"), hence Monte-VI-de-E-O. Marcio, Sao Paulo Brazil



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