Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

According to the introduction, ``Toponyms are place-names which have come to mean something more than the name of a place.'' More than 400 toponyms are briefly defined and linked to geographical origins in this little dictionary. About 25 percent of the definitions are place-names with other well-known meanings: china, shanghai, olympics, spartan, bourbon, turkey, bohemian. The most interesting category, another 25 percent, are words whose geographic origin is not commonly remembered: academia, laconic, meander, milliner, calico, bath, serendipity. There are about a dozen words whose geographical link is unclear: does dollar really derive from St. Joachimstal, and does jerry-built really come from the tumbling walls of Jericho? A few spurious or erroneously labeled words are identified: Winchester rifles are named for the man, not the place; oranges are not named for the town. A few inclusions are buildings or parts of buildings and not properly place-names: lobby, Pentagon, White House, Whitehall. But the largest group of terms, more than 200, are used as adjectives: Eton jacket, Clydesdale horses, Maltese cross, Venetian glass. This rather unique dictionary will be interesting to devoted word lovers, but of limited reference value.-K.F. Jones, University of New Mexico

Booklist Review

Toponyms are words derived from the names of places. A Dictionary of Toponyms is a slender collection of 447 alphabetically arranged place-names with annotations that describe the English-language words derived from them. This is a British publication with a definite British orientation in the selection of names and derivatives, e.g., Epsom salts and Eton collar. However, many selections are of American origin. It contains such recent references as the Denver boot (a clamp fixed to a wheel of a car, and wrongly attributed to Denver, Ohio) as well as more generally documented ones, such as the Arkansas toothpick (Bowie knife). Many of the place-name derivatives are well known, such as Danish pastry, French windows, and Bermuda shorts. Some American derivatives are less familiar, such as American cloth for oilcloth and Chicago piano for a rapid-firing antiaircraft gun. The toponym satin is described as being derived from the Arab word zaiturni, from the Chinese town of Tswan-chu-fu or Tsentung, although this is disputed by The Oxford English Dictionary. The book concludes with an index of the words derived from place-names. Here can be found many words that are used in everyday speech, such as meander, attic, italic, denim, and dollar. The index is specific, using inverted headings and indented subheadings under class entries such as cloth, cakes, and cats, which bring together several examples of each. Entries are sometimes listed more than once under related terms, such as ``hand-grenades, known as `pineapples''' and ```pineapples,' hand-grenades known as.'' This is a popular rather than a scholarly work, and it does not give specific sources for the derivations, though the introduction does credit Eric Partridge, Cunnington's Dictionary of Costume, and the OED. Partridge's Name into Word: Proper Names That Have Become Common Property (Macmillan, 1950) is the book that most closely resembles this, though it includes personal as well as geographical names. Despite the paucity of entries and the British orientation, comprehensive collections will want A Dictionary of Toponyms, and it might also be of interest in young adult collections as a browsing item.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Nigel Viney began his career in publishing as a bookseller for Blackwells in Oxford and then for Dennys in London. He joined William Heinemann in 1963 as production manager and worked his way up to managing director. After retiring, he wrote several books including The Great Paintings of England, Images of Wartime: British Art and Artists of World War I, and The Bluffer's Guide to Consultancy. He died on January 9, 2018 at the age of 95.

(Bowker Author Biography)