I started out with the intention of looking at unusual church names. The problem was, this offered the potential to accidentally poke fun at their congregations. It also didn’t help that most churches in the UK have pretty similar names. They’re named for individual saints, like St Nicholas’ Cathedral in Newcastle, or even all saints…

Looking at the origins of sports team names might seem antithetical to folklore. Yet sport forms part of the ritual calendar for many people, whether on a personal or a mass scale. Look at the good luck rituals people follow before they watch their team play. Or how about the sporting events that become part…

Victoria Male is an internationally recognized screenwriter, earning accolades from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, film festivals, and major industry lists. Her prose has been published worldwide in fifteen literary magazines and she’s written op-eds for major publications. She worked in creative development for The Montecito Picture Company and media startup Graphic…

There is no shortage of bizarre pub names in the UK. Some of them appear to be a combination of random objects, like the Frog and Nightgown. Others have a local story behind their odd name. I’ve covered unusual pub names before, so consider this Part 2. Yet when I started researching these examples, it…

Unlike place names, which often give us information who once lived somewhere, street names can be a different case entirely. Sometimes they bear the names of notable (and often now infamous) people.  Other times they refer to long-gone industries performed in the area – you can guess what happened on Cock Lane in London, site…

Place names are important and pass on a lot of valuable information, even if we no longer understand how to interpret it. Within them, they tell us who used to live in an area, or what natural features were important. Some of them even end up with a range of legends to explain names that…