More "divided by a common language" stuff

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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

Yeah, nothing much of substance out there for the general public, at least for this sub-topic. The bee in my bonnet is the unguessed-at possibility that "Braham" might only exist in Minnesota! I mean, to me it looks so typically English that I expected to easily find mention of at least a couple of other identically-named communities back in England. Guess not.
GreenWood wrote:Bray-um sounds posh.....
I think I'll start pronouncing the H. That'll raise some hackles.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

Nanohedron wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 7:26 pm Yeah, nothing much of substance out there for the general public, at least for this sub-topic. The bee in my bonnet is the unguessed-at possibility that "Braham" might only exist in Minnesota! I mean, to me it looks so typically English that I expected to easily find mention of at least a couple of other identically-named communities back in England. Guess not.
GreenWood wrote:Bray-um sounds posh.....
I think I'll start pronouncing the H. That'll raise some hackles.
You mean in the US there aren't references to Braham in UK ?

I wouldn't bother with the H then, just rename the place Lincoln and be done with it. It's very tribal even if Brythonic.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

Even if? On a cranky day, one could say all the better.

No, think about it: It's the only Braham in the entire English-speaking world, and nobody knows what the hell it means. There's an existential twist in there, somewhere.

Or the online documentation is just that scant. The only mention of a Braham in England that I can find - at all - is by way of the very aforementioned Pie Festival's website. Apparently the ancestral Braham is in Yorkshire if it's not just strayaway lore. But that's all I'm coming up with over here: a case of possible if romantic balderdash.

Do you get more info on this over there?
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

Lots of Brahams in UK, Braham wood, Braham hall, Braham castle, and the town called Bramham

"The name Bramham is first attested in the Domesday Book in the forms Bramha’, Brameha’, and Braham. It comes from the Old English words brōm ('broom') and hām ('village, homestead'), and thus once meant 'homestead characterised by broom'."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramham,_West_Yorkshire

https://getoutside.ordnancesurvey.co.uk ... -harrogate


https://getoutside.ordnancesurvey.co.uk ... od-babergh


https://historicengland.org.uk/images-b ... 1/12736/21

Braham castle is in

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... ode=yjba19

I think, or location Cambridgeshire if I remember. There is Brahan castle in Scotland, possibly also this Braham

https://www.flickr.com/photos/interneta ... 677019523/


Search terms make the difference possibly. Anyway Braham sounds very English to me, but who is to say, might have been a field of donkeys braying for all I know. If you know the northern accent/way of speaking it would fit straight into English though.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

GreenWood wrote:Lots of Brahams in UK, Braham wood, Braham hall, Braham castle, and the town called Bramham
Yeah, I was looking for "Braham" per se, and thought the possible connections with other spellings in this case to be suspect, not that I'm an expert in the slightest. But I didn't find references to the wood, hall, or castle, either, and I wonder why that would be.

At least now I can be sure that the MN town's name is indeed honestly derived and not made up. Thanks.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by david_h »

Nanohedron wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 7:54 pm Do you get more info on this over there?
I searched it on www.streetmap.co.uk
www.streetmap.co.uk wrote: You are trying to find "Braham"
There are several possible locations, please select one...

Places
Braham Fm, Cambridgeshire [Farm]
Braham Hall, Suffolk
Braham Hall, North Yorkshire
Braham Hall, Essex

Streets
Braham, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B_79
Braham Crescent, Three Rivers, Hertfordshire, Eastern, WD25
Braham Lane, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Yorkshire and the Humber, HG5
Braham Street, London, E_1
Zoomed to the large scale map for each of the first four then did a web search for the name with the nearest village. With the results, noted above, that the Suffolk one was owned by someone with the name 'de Braham' in the 13th century and that the Cambridgshire, Yorkshire, and Essex ones had alternative 'no h' spellings of Brame, Braim, and Bream respectively. 'Yours' sounds like it might be the Yorkshire one. Braham Wood is about half a mile from the Essex one. I can only find Brahan Castle,

No settlements called Braham in the UK it seems. None of the streets are near the four buildings. However, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braham_(surname) lists 16 'notable people' so a street or four is not surprising.

Two possibilities that come to mind are that it's from a Norman called 'de Braham' or its a Saxon 'ham' (as per Greenwood's post above) and a Norman adopted it. Greenwood's Domesday book info suggests that latter.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

Apparently the Normans did use the name Bram as short for Abraham, feasibly Braham also but that doesn't really fit with french language to my view, is awkward. They were frenchified norsemen of a kind, so maybe it suited to pick Braham back up somehow, or by inter marriage ? De Braham sounds like how in Spain the mother's surname is added at end , not sure how the Normans went about that. My impression though is that Braham is originally Saxon, and names better spoken with hard 'a' then "ham" probably also. Similar softer sounding name spellings are possibly either changed to suit local accent or are from other source.

I suppose from Norman Bram - ham is possible, but I'm not sure the Normans went adding "hams" to town names. Bram as broom makes more sense that way.

It still doesn't explain how Braham ended up as the US town name, I would guess someone from England called it that after their own town, or it was named after someone there called Braham.

Nano, I'm not sure that decides anything but at least it might help towards figuring out an answer.

Archaeology in Hertfordshire: Recent Research edited by Kris Lockyear

Has quite a lot of mention of the Brahhingas
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

GreenWood wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:50 am Nano, I'm not sure that decides anything but at least it might help towards figuring out an answer.
It's answer enough. :)
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

....but there is more :

"Towns such as Braham and Grandy were born along the tracks in 1899. In fact, upon confirmation of the railroad’s location, Isanti relocated to its present location along the line, as did the town of Stanchfield"

https://www.isanti-chisagocountystar.co ... 383a3.html

Just to confuse you further


"Listed as Wilburgeham in the 10th century, and Wiborgham in the Domesday Book, the name "Wilbraham" means "Homestead of a woman called Wilburh"."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wilbraham

As there is a town called Wil'Braham in Massachussets

https://books.google.pt/books?id=FN0TAA ... ta&f=false


Also

Some Comments on the Historic and Geographic Importance of Railroads in Minnesota Richard V. Francaviglia

is interesting.

Also Braham was supposedly populated with many Swedes (@ early 20th century anyway).

:thumbsup:
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

GreenWood wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:40 pm Also Braham was supposedly populated with many Swedes (@ early 20th century anyway).
The whole story is more sinister. We Swedes infested just about everywhere that Minnesotan gravity could hold us.

Braham, MN used to be something of a minor big deal for motorists on the then-main route between Duluth and points south; Braham was the midpoint and thus a pit stop. Lotsa pie was sold at the eateries, and the town became a byword for it. Now that the modern main route has bypassed Braham and left it in relative isolation, the town has a remembrance of its flaky-goodness glory days every year. The place was buzzing when I was there for it.

Appropriately, there is a "Braham pie" - also apparently from the UK - that's basically an apple pie with berries and a few other things added. Most tasty indeed. You can get it at the Braham Pie Day festival if, like me, you're too lazy to make one for yourself and, not like me, are up for a road trip.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by GreenWood »

I'm often surprised by how "recent" much of the US is. Maybe there were earlier tracks, but the roads you mention are from the '30s . Branham is said founded 1899, the railroad was built sometime after 1870 . Before that it seems quite wild. By early 20th century it was a town.


https://www.isanti-chisagocountystar.co ... 087f8.html
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

GreenWood wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 5:36 pm I'm often surprised by how "recent" much of the US is. Maybe there were earlier tracks, but the roads you mention are from the '30s . Branham is said founded 1899, the railroad was built sometime after 1870 . Before that it seems quite wild. By early 20th century it was a town.


https://www.isanti-chisagocountystar.co ... 087f8.html
The whole US - the political entity and what led to it - is all recent history, really. But it's especially true of the north central US, with its indigenous groups located midway between coasts so distant as not to matter to them, except for what might come by trade; the smallpox disaster never made it as far as the Upper Midwest, such was its remoteness. Similarly the land itself was seen by the US as too isolated to be attractive; the West Coast was thought the better bet, and easily worth the trouble it took to get there. So even as late as the 1860s - that's practically yesterday, at only around 160 years ago - most natives in the Upper Midwest were still living traditionally and some had never even seen a white man, other than maybe the occasional trader. But by then the fertility of this territory was suddenly on the map, and it was soon settled mainly by a surge of Northern European immigrants; farmers and loggers, for the most part. Given its economic force, to the politicians that was a constituency not to be ignored, so as you might imagine things took off in short order, and practically fast enough to make your head spin.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by MikeS »

I apologize for going a bit off the language track. I looked up Braham on Google maps and noticed one of the east-west streets there was 413th Avenue NE. All the small towns between there and the Twin Cities are bisected by still large but decreasing street numbers. Did Minneapolis once (or still) have ideas about expanding to the Canadian border?
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Nanohedron »

MikeS wrote: Mon Dec 12, 2022 9:28 amI looked up Braham on Google maps and noticed one of the east-west streets there was 413th Avenue NE.
That brought me up short. There's no way I can think of that wee Braham would have logical cause for so inflated a street number. Hipsters everywhere should travel there to appreciate its irony all the more poigniantly.
MikeS wrote:Did Minneapolis once (or still) have ideas about expanding to the Canadian border?
Merely the border? Tomorrow the world. You will know the taste of lutefisk.

BTW, I once heard someone describe the Minnesota accent as like Canadian, only drawn with a crayon. I thought that was hilarious and had to share it, but upon hearing the bon mot a friend blew a gasket and not in a good way, so there might be some truth to it.
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Re: More "divided by a common language" stuff

Post by Moof »

GreenWood wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:50 am Apparently the Normans did use the name Bram as short for Abraham, feasibly Braham also but that doesn't really fit with french language to my view, is awkward. They were frenchified norsemen of a kind, so maybe it suited to pick Braham back up somehow, or by inter marriage ? De Braham sounds like how in Spain the mother's surname is added at end , not sure how the Normans went about that.
Surnames were very often taken from place names, occupations, etc., so the origin of the owner's name is likely to be what it means: "of Braham".

It's said the Normans introduced the tradition of non-patronymic surnames to Britain and Ireland, but at the time of the invasion they probably weren't universally used by them either, and the names may not have been fixed in the modern sense. A Norman who gained manors in England post-invasion might associate himself with a local place name, but earlier have been known by another; or he might never have used it himself, but his descendants took the place name because it had gained status; or his family may simply have acquired the name through usage by others, when it was necessary (especially in legal and property matters) to distinguish between two regional landowners with the same given name. I wonder if the latter might actually have been the most common way to acquire a place name.
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