Tuesday 26 March 2019

duck pond town

Seeing this news brief about how Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan in the southwest, is directing real estate developers to avoid foreign, strange and particularly repetitive place names in order to promote historical and cultural heritage made me think of the phenomenon of pleonasms and tautological (同義反覆) toponymy.
Thousands of properties might be affected and need new signage to be in compliance. I realise that the regulation is probably meant to halt the profusion of centres and towers, but it also might be aimed at curbing repetition that comes systematically in translation, like in the case of the Yunling Mountains (the Cloudy Mountains Mountains), Jiayugun Pass (Jiayu Pass Pass), Nathu La Pass (Listening Ears Pass Pass), or the Gobi Desert (the Desert Desert).