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Using Google maps I can find five Seven Mile Lakes and one Ten Mile Lake in Canada, but no Seven Miles Lake or Tenth Miles Lake at all. Which hinterland is being referred to here? Keith ________________________________ From: The English Place-Name List <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Jones, Richard (Dr.) <[log in to unmask]> Sent: 26 September 2018 09:38 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Miles I have received the following enquiry from Canada and thought it would be helpful to gather views/insights from the wider pn community before replying: 'As I advance in my research on Algonquian toponyms in Canada, I have become curious about place-names deploying the English term mile. There is a wealth of such names mainly in the hinterland referring to lakes, rivers and brooks, sometimes also to salmon pools and white waters. Our official toponymy bureau can't provide any origin for these names. At times the bureau has inserted comments noting that, say, Seven Miles Lake and Tenth Miles Lake are more (or sometime less) than three miles from one another. I recently realized that Algonquian peoples traditionally measured their distance in terms of time, using mainly their word for 'hour'. Nowadays, they translate the English word mile with their word for 'hour'. It is therefore possible to hypothesise that when English explorers and surveyors used Aboriginal guides to explore the hinterland, the latter spoke to the former in terms of miles while what they (the Aboriginal guides) had in mind was the distance they could cover in one hour. If the terrain or the water was difficult then they covered less distance in one hour than if the terrain/water was easy. I think there are some place-names based on mile in UK. If so, is the distance between two such places an exact equivalent of the English mile?' Thoughts? Richard ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the EPNL list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=EPNL&A=1