Last week's trek across Georgia from one end to the other produced a most interesting list of place names, probably similar in character but unique in detail to those you might find in any country of the world if you knew its language enough.
I remember, during my brief stay in the UK as an adult from 1990 to 1991, delighting over a map of the country and its places: Ratby, St Bees, Godmanstone, Street, Stair, Stone, Piddletrenthide and so many more. I love digging these things up, and even more so in another language. The Russian one I remember best, from a little place in the Urals, means Lying on the Left Side.
Georgia's list (translated here, mostly from Georgian into English), especially now that hundreds of new place signs have been made and set up for the first time in my 16 years here, is equally fascinating.
Let's start off in the east, where I discovered that Education is not just a process or a state, but a village. Not far away is Work, unfortunately, but the best part is that these two are linked by Link! Literally, there's a Link between Work and Education (or vice versa, if you prefer). And if you need more Work, there's another one near the Black Sea, too.
You can take your choice of swimming in the rivers Horsewater, Prone [to what?] or Cold; the first sounds... much warmer than the last, which might be just the thing in the boiling lowland summer heat of this country.
That there are any number of Newtowns, and Newvilles, should come as no surprise to someone familiar with Newcastle.
Wine Cellar isn't just a room or place with huge stone-stoppered clay vessels set all the way into the ground, maturing your wine to perfection over years or decades, common to so many houses: it's a whole community.
Farm—surely that's more than half the country, blessed as it is with such arable land in a variety of climatic zones? And a village.
Code Source (as opposed to Source Code): a real place, from which who knows what secret things originate in this modern computing age? Java for more programming... Also, Spring Head (spring as in water source, head as in river's start), and Queen's Spring.
Walnut, not the Grove, just the nut and its trees. Elm too, and Beech Spring. Bridal. Monastery. Sun's Heart. Valley Fort. Bathroom. Alert. Dizzy. To the Point. Square (as in town square). Sunny. Baghdad, Japana and Bethlehem. Red Mountain and Redhill. Mount's Mouth and Mount's Base. Mountain of [the hunting goddess] Dali. October (obviously a communist-era name; ditto for First of May). Old. I Am [Here], Uncle; I Am Kind. Little Hall. Victory, near Vine.
Behind is near the west end of the country; Before, where famed Chavchavadze had his estate and now a great winery works, is near the east end.
Why, my wife and I live in Help (this one originating in Hebrew, not Georgian). Just down the road is Shield. Highest village around? A shortened form of Braveheart. The original name of the local capital was Seti, long before SETI was thought of as the acronym of the decades-old program for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, scanning the skies for all manner of possible alien communication signals. The provincial capital is called Big Zug... And so it goes on, all these names adding their local flavor to the special sauce that is Georgia once you know how to winkle them out. Apologies to native speakers if I got any of them wrong; a few are purely phonetic equivalents, not translations!
By Tony Hanmer
Originally published in Georgia Today
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 1300 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti