Today’s Zippy:
I can’t identify the diner, but the names are familiar: Bill Griffith finds -wick names intrinsically funny, and he’s not alone in this.
Sedgewick in an earlier Zippy here, where (talking about names) I said that “Sedgewick has a number of possible sources, and might have been chosen just for its sound.”
Then there’s Fenwick, notably here:
The Duchy of Grand Fenwick is a tiny fictional country created by Leonard Wibberley in a series of comedic novels beginning with The Mouse That Roared (1955), which was later made into a film. (link)
Why –wick names strike many people as silly is an interesting question in itself, and I don’t have a quick answer. (“Just because it is” is not an accetpable answer.)
February 14, 2013 at 12:29 pm |
The rhyming slang connection? Hampton wick…
February 14, 2013 at 4:36 pm |
What’s funny?
— Robert Southwick Richmond (my mother’s maiden name)
The -wick means town or village. Cognate with Latin vicus, Greek (w)oikos.
In British place names the “w” is sometimes lost – Southwick is sometimes pronounced suthick or sethick in the U.K.