Discworld-y cities

[Tonyblack]

How's this for Discworld-y?

[chris.ph]

poor sod fancy being called wynkyn

[Cheery]

Both the names "William" and "de Worde" show up and a University library... Very discworldish indeed.

[kakaze]

The idea of Ankh-Morpork being built on top of Ankh-Morpork is based on Seattle, Washington.

That can be said of a lot of cities, though - there's a lot of old London underground, many many tributaries to the Thames that have long been built over, the most famous perhaps being the River Fleet.

I'm sure.

It's just that Terry's supposed to have been inspired by Seattle.

It's even in Wikipedia:

Terry Pratchett has cited Seattle as one of the influences in his decision to give Ankh-Morpork its own Underground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground#In_fiction

[Jan Van Quirm]

Pedantic moment...

Terry Pratchett has cited Seattle as one of the influences in his decision to give Ankh-Morpork its own Underground.

not Ankh-Morpork the actual place - just putting the Underground in there

[wolfiess]

i always think that ankh-morpork is a mix of New York, London Glasgow and York lol

[kakaze]

not Ankh-Morpork the actual place - just putting the Underground in there

I'm sorry, isn't that what I said?

The idea of Ankh-Morpork being built on top of Ankh-Morpork is based on Seattle, Washington.

[NightOwl]

didn't Terry admit that it was Lancaster & Morecambe - lANC.-MORpork?

if you check a map -

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=l ... e&resnum=1

they are separated by a river, but from what I hear merge into one another...

the actual description is more like York or Ye Olde London - but I recall TP saying it was Oop North

[Jan Van Quirm]

not Ankh-Morpork the actual place - just putting the Underground in there

I'm sorry, isn't that what I said?

The idea of Ankh-Morpork being built on top of Ankh-Morpork is based on Seattle, Washington.

Beware the wikipedia - the article you linked also said at the top that Seattle was amongst several other Roundworld cities that A-M have been based upon including London Prague and Tailinn. London has an underground railway built underground in the central area and yes parts of that were built on earlier buildings around the Thames basin as are many familiar famous buildings - Somerset House being one of those. I worked there for 6 years and the basement down there regularly flooded (as do many other central London underground stations. We also had silt seepage occasionally due to rotting foundations of houses of the original site before the current building was put up over them in the mid 1500s. Very, very smelly indeed!

[Vena Ravenhaired]

As Ankh-Morpork is a twinned city, there must be (at least somewhere), a passing resemblance to Buda and Pest, originally separate, now joined, although the people condider themselves separate.

Cheers, Vena

[Tonyblack]

As Ankh-Morpork is a twinned city, there must be (at least somewhere), a passing resemblance to Buda and Pest, originally separate, now joined, although the people condider themselves separate.

Cheers, Vena

Indeed! Here's an annotation for Colour of Magic from LSpace.org:

- [p. 9/9] "Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork."

Terry has said that the name 'Ankh-Morpork' was inspired neither by the ankh (the Egyptian cross with the closed loop on top), nor by the Australian or New Zealand species of bird (frogmouths and small brown owls, respectively) that go by the name of 'Morepork'.

Since I first wrote down the above annotation, there have been new developments, however. In The Streets of Ankh-Morpork and The Discworld Companion we are shown an illustration of the Ankh-Morpork coat of arms, which does feature a Morepork/owl holding an ankh. But from Terry's remarks (see next annotation) I feel it's safe to say that neither bird nor cross were explicitly on his mind when he first came up with the name Ankh-Morpork.

Finally, many readers have mentioned the resonance that Ankh-Morpork has with our world's Budapest: also a large city made up of two smaller cities (Buda and Pest) separated by a river.

Full article HERE.