The meaning of the Discworld names

[Archaeologist]

Four Xs also are sometimes used to donate a blanked out swearword

Xxxxing appropriate, too.

Or...?

Cartographer: What the xxxx do I call this place, eh? Oh, I know.

Oh, the puns.

[deldaisy]

Castlemaine XXXX

Never seen those ads here Tony. Must be for an overseas market.

Mind you.... living in Brisbane (home of the XXXX Brewery) we get the American Navy here each year for War Games up a bit further north and heaps of the young sailors on leave for a while. (You can recognise them easily.... they are the ones wearing T-Shirts in winter while we are in coats).

Was talking to a taxi driver one night the navy was in town and he was telling me how MANY of the yank sailors insist on him driving them in the direction of the huge XXXX sign you can see from alot of Brissy. (Its over the Brewery)....... seems they think it denotes the "Red Light" district of Brisbane.... they are a bit shocked to find out that nearby are lots of lovely street cafes and coffee shops

[deldaisy]

Oh and on a personal level.... XXX's can mean kisses too.

We had huge billboards a few years ago that read:

IF YOU WANT LONGER LASTING SEX - RING 555 444 333

After some complaints they changed the billboards to:

IF YOU WANT LONGER LASTING XXX - ring 555 444 333

We were driving fown the freeway when my little one quietly mouthed the words (she was just learning to read)... looked across at me and said: "..and longer lasting hugs too hey Mum. They should have put on kisses AND hugs"

[meerkat]

[Archaeologist]

I know Brisbane like the back of my hand. I remember those billboards.

[Tonyblack]

I was just watching an episode from series 5 of QI where they asked a question about "Rough Music" - not of the contestants had heard of it and, to be honest, neither had I before reading I Shall Wear Midnight. They said that it was the punishment handed out to wife beaters in English villages up until about 100 years ago.

All the villagers would turn up at the accused's house at midnight banging pots and making a noise to shame the person concerned.

It's always good to see a Pratchett related reference.

[Penfold]

I was just watching an episode from series 5 of QI where they asked a question about "Rough Music" - not of the contestants had heard of it and, to be honest, neither had I before reading I Shall Wear Midnight.

Is this the one?

http://youtu.be/uXom0OP3Rwk

[Tonyblack]

That's the one.

[deldaisy]

I know Brisbane like the back of my hand. I remember those billboards.

I am not a prude and my kids and I talk openly.... but the saturation advertising they had with those signs was what annoyed me more than the message. It seemed to be every second billboard at one time. Overkill. They have the "sex" word back but at least they aren't on every billboard now.

Want longer lasting XXX? Then put some damn effort in you selfish b*****d!

[AgProv]

The Llamedos/Llareggub thing: It always pays to think of Pratchett placenames backwards.

In the early books and on the Mappe is a location called Ecalpon...

Incidentally, the only word in the Welsh language even remotely like "llamedos" took some searching for - it's obselete and only used in poetry and Eisteiddfods, but the word llymdost has a meaning of "smelly" or "pungent". It also has a meaning, in poetry, of something almost offensively maudlin. Well, that's what Aberystwyth University's Welsh Language and Culture department knows, anyway.

[AgProv]

Let us now consider derivations for some of the street and location names in the city of Ankh-Morpork.

Hope Springs, up in the Tump area of Ankh: think poet poet Alexander Pope:- "Hope springs eternal in the human breast"

Mollymog Street: Pope is referenced again. Molly Mog, the Rose of Wokingham, was a seventeenth century barmaid in Berkshire whose beauty inspired a ballad written by poet Alexander Pope.

There may be other Pope references in the city that I haven't found yet...

[AgProv]

Holofernes Street: In the almost-Biblical Book of Judith, Holofernes is the Persian general who she slays after first "marrying" him. As there is always a glamour to a female Assassin using her womanly wiles to bring about an inhumation, the story has resonated down the years in moral fable, poetry, plays, operas, et c.

[AgProv]

And I don't want to monopolise this, but the Rim Bank is the riverside walk running around the edge of the Isle of Gods. Think "Embankment" in London and the Rive Gauche in Paris; the Parisian comparison is possibly more apt, as "Rim(wards) Walk", Rimwards corresponding to "gauche" in the Left Bank/West Bank sense.