Some place names repeat the same word twice, by using two different synonyms. This often happens in English when a name from a foreign language is used with an English word. Many people prefer to use the name Sahara on its own, instead of Sahara Desert, because the word Sahara means desert in Arabic (صحراء). Saying desert desert sounds silly.
There are many more examples, China's Yunling Mountains (雲嶺) literally are China's Cloudy Mountains Mountains. The River Avon in Stratford, England, gets the name Avon from Old Brittonic.1 The name Avon means river. It sounds silly to say that in Shakespeare's day, the River River was important for trade and a source of power for the mill.2 In Hong Kong, Tai Mo Shan Peak is from 大帽山 meaning big hat mountain, so Tai Mo Shan Peak is literally Big Hat Peak Peak.
People's names as well as place names can repeat. Sometimes two different, but similar sounding, Chinese names are written in English in the same way. Cao Cao (曹操) was an early third century warlord and Yang Yang (楊洋) is a baseball player. In both cases the problem is with the inflexible transcription from Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet, not the original names.3 Then there are cases such as the name of Galileo Galilei, both of his names refer to the same lake in Israel.
Other examples include:
The name Hong Kong comes from 香港, meaning fragrant harbour. So the Harbour of Hong Kong literally means the Harbour of Fragrant Harbour.
There are places such as The Le Hotel or The L'Hotel. The word le is French for the masculine the, making the name The The Hotel.
American English speakers order chai tea, of course Ming Pao readers know that chai is tea, meaning they are asking for tea tea4.
Advertisements offer us free gifts; of course a gift is free by definition, so a free gift is actually a gift gift.
People ask us to please RSVP. RSVP is an abbreviation for répondez s'il vous plaît, French for reply if you please. So they are asking us to please reply if you please.
We install the LibreOffice office suite on our computers.5 Since here the word suite is being used as a synonym for office, we are installing the Libre office office office.
These examples sound fun, but there is a serious writing point. Good writing should be concise and not contain any unnecessary words. Doubled names are tautological and a serious style error. Sentences do not have to be short and without detail, but every word and every sentence should provide information to the reader. It is better to drop the extra word. A sardine fish sandwich or a tuna fish sandwich should just be a sardine sandwich, or a tuna sandwich, since sardines and tuna are fish. Tai Mo Shan Hill is better reduced to Tai Mo Shan.
Footnotes:
1. Old Brittonic is the original British language that is the ancestor of Modern Welsh.
2. England has five River Avons in addition to three in Scotland and one in Wales. Although the Welsh river is spelt Afon Afan, which also means River River. Afon means river in Modern Welsh.
3. So technically they are only tautologies in English.
4. Which does at least distinguish it from mint tea, camomile tea, chrysanthemum tea and other herbal teas.
5. The LibreOffice is a free competitor of MicroSoft OfficeTM, which includes programs for word processing, editing of spreadsheets, mathematical formulae, slideshows, diagrams and working with databases.
by John Larrysson [email protected]
A native English speaker who has been teaching practical English in Hong Kong for over two decades.
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