There are lots of places in the
world which have the same name twice. Places like the Sahara Desert: well, Sahara comes from the Arabic for "desert", so that's the Desert Desert. Or the River Avon. Avon originally meant "River", so it's the River River. There are a few triple names
like that in the world, but this, Torpenhow Hill in the Lake
District, in north-west of England, is the only place in the world with
four words that all mean the same thing. Tor, Old English for hill. Penn, Old Welsh for hill, How, Old English for a slightly
different kind of hill, and finally modern English, hill. I know it's not a massively
impressive place, but the name's good. Except that's a story that's been
debunked quite a few times. Double and triple place names
are a thing, that's true. They tend to happen because
centuries ago locals would name the nearby hill, or river, or
mountain, or desert, the obvious name, like, "the hill", and then when folks with other languages arrived, for trade or conquest or exploration, they added their word for it as well. But the trouble here is: there is no
Torpenhow Hill marked on any official map. The name's almost certainly a modern invention. Someone noticed the village of
Torpenhow about a mile away, and spotted the three words for hill there, and decided to add the modern
English "hill" to it as well. And: tor, penn, and how all have more
complicated definitions than "hill". It's not really "hill hill hill", that village, you can plausibly translate "torpenhow"
as, well, the land the village sits on: a small rise jutting out
from a much bigger incline. This is just a bump on the
side of an actual big hill. I don't have a drone with me, but
Google Earth shows it well enough. Also... the village's name is
"Trepenna". It's spelled "Torpenhow", but the local pronunciation is "trepenna". So you can tell who's done the research when
this is mentioned in a list of weird place names. In reality, there's just
the village of "Trepenna". Tor-pen-how Hill doesn't exist. That's the debunk. And so now, I'm going to debunk the debunk. Because if that's true, why am I out
of breath? What did I just climb? I came up here from the village, it's
a slow steady climb on a country road. The land around this point is lower, and it
sits right next to Trepenna-slash-Torpenhow. Now, I'm not going to colonise the Lake District
and tell them how they should be naming things. But there have been plenty of tourist
attractions built around much less than this. A good map is like a good dictionary: it
reflects the real world, it doesn't make it. If people will go to that one tree in
New Zealand that looks good on Instagram, just because they've seen other pictures of it, they'd probably come to Hill Hill Hill Hill. People go to Four Corners in the US
just to be in four states at once, it's not too weird to think that
people would want to visit here. Sure, the village is "Trepenna",
but this can be Torpenhow Hill, if enough people want it to be. And the thing is: as I record this, if you
type "Torpenhow Hill" into online maps... quite a few of them point you here. Actually, just over there, I'll CG in a
giant map marker just to make my point. The only thing stopping this
officially being "Torpenhow Hill" is that there's not enough consensus. So who decides that? Because I do worry about
coming to places like this. This is a public footpath, I didn't
have to ask permission to be here, but I have a duty of care to the locations
I visit, and to people who live there. That one tree in New Zealand is being
slowly destroyed by tourism and by vandals. Now, "Trepenna" is far enough off
the tourist trail so, probably, only a few geography nerds
will bother to trek out here. But if this did start becoming popular, if
tourists did start arriving at Tor-pen-how Hill, I do wonder how the locals in the
quiet little village would feel. Because the signpost that
says this is a public footpath has mysteriously disappeared since the last
time the Google Street View car came by. I'm not saying anyone destroyed it, I'm just saying no-one's bothered to replace it. So as for how the locals feel? I probably shouldn't bother them by asking.
So basically this video but serious.
This guy has the uncanny ability to create something interesting out of thin air or at least give it that vibe.
I think a lot of his videos are watchable not because of the content but because of how he presents it and how short they are. Now don't get me wrong once in a while he make a really interesting video, but there is a lot of filler.
"This can be torpenhow hill if enough people want it..." And $GME can go to the moon if enough people want it.
YouTube: "Use a variety of keywords in your video title"
Tom Scott: "Hill Hill Hill Hill debunked debunked"