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I once read -- or heard? -- that at some point mapmakers began deleting
apostrophes from place names in coastal areas out of worry that apostrophes
would be mistaken for islands. Has anybody else heard or read this version
of things, which might very well be a total fabrication, a mapmakers' myth?
My experience has certainly been that the inconsistency with "to
apostrophize or not to apostrophize" -- or even to use the possessive of a
name or the plain name -- goes far back, to earlier centuries. My family's
ancestral site in Charlotte Country, N.B., has been variously printed on
maps and in other places as Bartlett's Mills, Bartlett's Mill, Bartlett
Mills, Bartletts Mill, etc., as nearby St. Stephen has appeared in various
ways. (Of course there must be hundreds if not thousands of similar cases
across the country.) Curiously, as far as I know, St. Stephen's near
neighbour St. Andrews hasn't appeared as St. Andrew. The history of the town
published in 1932 had it as St. Andrews, with no apostrophe, and that's the
way I've always seen it, but I suspect the apostrophe was there somewhere
further back.
Brian
---- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Wolford" <jimwolford@eastlink.ca>
To: "NatureNS" <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
Cc: "Jon Percy" <bofep@auracom.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 11:29 AM
Subject: [NatureNS] on apostrophes in geographical names
> Jon's right, of course, but there is an issue here that needs a crusader?
> I
> look at it as both a heritage issue and a grammar issue (not just the
> latter, as some of you might suspect). I think the current lists of
> "official place names" are doing a huge cop-out by taking all the
> apostrophes out of those names. If this is allowed to go on for much
> longer, nobody alive will know what the original names' origins really
> were
> (or is it too late now, or nobody cares but me?). Anyhow, this probably
> doesn't deserve any discussion here now. Blame Jon for bringing this up,
> and my use of apostrophes, often hypothetically, is intentional -- e.g.
> King's County, Starr's Point, etc. etc. -- does anyone know where the name
> Hants came from in Hants County??
>
> Cheers from Jim in Wolfville
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