Conference thebay::joyoflex

    From the Saxons, I believe.  Essex is in the east, Sussex in the
    south, Middlesex in the middle, Wessex in the west.
    
  --Simon
    

    To be slightly more specific, I believe they are corruptions
    of {East, South, Middle, West} Saxony.
    
    --- jerry

    You'll notice that there is no Nossex.  Obviously, only 'folk' were
    allowed to live in the North.
    
    Jeff.

Here in Eastern Mass. we have a newspaper called

	Middlesex News

It occurred to me the other day that this could be slightly mispronounced
as

	My Dull Sex News

    re: .3
    
    If you looked on a map to find NOSSEX, it would probably take you
    to my house.
    
    Only Kidding, honey.  Really, dear, I was only kidding. Honey? Honey?
    

    And what am I offered not to pass that one on, Mike?
    

    It is, of course, fictitious, like the North Riding.
    

Hey, spouse of LILLY, beware !

I looked up NOSSEX on the map, and it *didn't* lead to your house,
even though you've been on a two-week business trip.

    Re .8 title.....
    
    Don't know about marIschino, but marAschino could be harmonicas.....?
    

    Curiously, whilest there are Norfolk and Suffolk, there aren't any
    Wefolk. Perhaps the Wee Folk all went off to Ireland long ago. Or
    should that be Scotland?
    
    Phillip

    Re .11:
    
    Wouldn't that be "Wesfolk" anyway?"
    
    Ireland and Scotland, both.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    Have you ever noticed how often the narrow newspaper columns cause
    "Middlesex" to be hyphenated in such a way that your eye picks up
    on the word "sex" when scanning a column?
    
    

    In the _Globe_ and the _Middlesex News_, however, the hyphenation
    is usually in the form of something like the following: "Middl-
    esex."
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    Re .1
    
    > From the Saxons, I believe.
    
    Indeed, they are often credited with the creation of Anglo Sexon words....

    Somewhere in the 70's or early 80's, Shropshire was renamed as Salop.
    The new name, however, was quickly dropped after some French-speaking
    people heard about it...
    				Denis.

    ???
    
    Something may have happened in the '70s-'80s, but `Salop' has been around 
    much longer than that - probably hundreds of years (possibly an 
    abbreviation of the Latin name for the county town - I'll look it up).

I believe that in 1974 (local govt. reorganisation, when Avon appeared and
Rutland disappeared), Shropshire actually ceased to exist, and became known 
officially *only* as Salop. It was changed back a few years after, with
Salop of course still being an acceptable abbreviation. 

My 1980s Webster's (US) dictionary still has "Salop, or formerly Shropshire" 
in its geographical names section.

John

Salop is and always has been primarily a recommended postal abbreviation.  The 
Royal Mail largely ignored Local Government Reorganisation so Salop would have
continued as a postal address after Shropshire ceased to exist as an
administrative county.

I would guess this was the sense in which Salop survived Shropshire.

Jon
 

  re: 332.16 by PRSSOS::MAILLARD "Denis MAILLARD" 

  >    The new name, however, was quickly dropped after some French-speaking
  >    people heard about it...

  So, what does Salop mean in French?

  Pruriently Yours,

  JP

>  So, what does Salop mean in French?

I believe it would be pronounced the same as "salaud" which is a 
rather impolite term of abuse. For an exact definition, refer to 
a decent-sized French dictionary! 

John

    I am sure Roger could give a definitive answer, but my dictionary gives
    
    salope  :  slattern, slut      and
    salaud  :  (a) swine, filthy beast
               (b) skunk, son of a bitch
    
    The pronunciations would not be the same, but the words appear to be
    related.

So what's the derivation of "salopettes" (skiing pants)?

    `Salop' comes from Ancien Fran[c-cedilla]ais (at least, I assume that's
    what AF means in my SOED; what Ancien Fran[c-cedilla]ais had to do with
    the naming of a city (Shrewsbury - Salopesberia [or should that be
    -ie? Roger?]) so far from Normandy I can't say. Bonnie? SOED gave 
    11th c. as the earliest citation.
    
    There were lots of other influences on the naming of Shropshire, none
    of which survived in my memory these last two weeks, but they were all
    AF.
    
    So the French were involved at both ends of the story - the 11th c.
    coining and the 20th century objection.
    
    
    b

    re: .24
    
    Well, in the table in the front of my Webster's, "AF" means
    "Anglo-French", which would refer to the mixed Norman-Anglo-Saxon
    dialect spoken in the areas where the Normen settled.  Ancien
    Francais is OF for Old French.
    
    The 11th century is when the Norman French invaded England --
    1066, to be precise. 
    
    I'll do some digging through my stuff and see what turns up.
    
    --bonnie

	There's an Old French word "salo" with first citation 11th
	century; might well have given Salop in Anglo-French. 

	It's a francique root meaning dull, dim, muddy. It gave 
	a large number of French words; still in use today are: "sale",
	"salaud", "salope", "salopette", "saloperie", "salopard" and 
	others. In today's usage they all indicate physical or moral 
	filthiness (my apologies to our readers from Schropshire).

	"Salopette" is 'overalls' kind of clothing for babies, mechanics 
	and other folks who spend lots of time crawling on the floor, and 
	tend to get very dirty. The name was (recently) extended to the 
	ski dress that has a similar shape.

	"Salope" is dated 17th century by Bloch-Wartburg. Formed on
	"sale" + "hoppe". "Hoppe" was the name of a bird which was 
	said to be filthy; there was a proverb in Lorraine: "sale comme
	une hoppe". Today the same bird is a "huppe".

	In the 20th century, "salope" became a very rude word. It represents
	the ultimate degree of filthiness (sorry again). I insist that
	you should never call anyone "une salope" under any circumstances;
	even a Parisian taxi driver wouldn't !   :)

	roger

    I wasn't able to find anything about Salop or Shropshire in my
    reference stuff.  All there was is one suggestion -- with no
    evidence cited -- that the town began as a military base for
    post-conquest Norman armies.  If it's true that the town was a
    military one, or that it was used by the Normans, it's possible
    that the natives nicknamed it "The Dirty Place" or something like
    that.  It was a standard belief among the anglo-saxons that the
    Normans were filthy pigs.
    
    One place that neither Salop nor Shropshire showed up in any
    spelling variant was my British surnames book.  Which is itself
    intriguing, because most English places that have been around for
    any length of time show up as somebody's name.  But since the book
    only covers surnames that were in use in 1967, it's possible the
    name once existed, then died out.
    
    --bonnie

	re .27

	No doubt the place was occupied by the Norman-French
	after Hastings; but the rest of England was too (and 
	was not globally renamed "dirty place" for that reason !).

	If a place is/was called "The dirty place", we shouldn't 
	try to blame the foreigners ...:)  I would check the area 
	for the presence of marshlands, peat-bogs, tan-yards or 
	other things that could have been considered dirty.

	roger