Translations:Wiktionnaire:Actualités/024-mars-2017/9/en

For people interested by toponymy, stability of location names over time and space is often a subject of a questioning, sometimes a headache. Thus, for example, the Semois river becames the Semoy river flows from Belgium to France and La Selle-en-Hermoy village is called La Selle-en-Hermois depending on the time or the scripter. Considering the microtoponyms, chaos is total, transcriptions appears to be randomly done by topographers who do not understand local languages and conflicts between countrymen and geometers might be strong^[1].

↑ The author of this post reminds about a vigorous debate between a geometer and a peasant from Ardennes, in the middle of 1960s, on the transcription of a toponym: the "lieu-dit" was named gloie, written form from Reims of gloye or glauye from Ardennes (which indicated already an old name change), and the geometer wanted to rename it gloire [glory] (grande gloire sound nicer than grande gloye) ; countryman was upset and indicated that the "gloye" is used to water cattle and glory ("gloire") only to expand the list of victims on war memorials.

[1] The author of this post reminds about a vigorous debate between a geometer and a peasant from Ardennes, in the middle of 1960s, on the transcription of a toponym: the "lieu-dit" was named gloie, written form from Reims of gloye or glauye from Ardennes (which indicated already an old name change), and the geometer wanted to rename it gloire [glory] (grande gloire sound nicer than grande gloye) ; countryman was upset and indicated that the "gloye" is used to water cattle and glory ("gloire") only to expand the list of victims on war memorials.

[1]