Unnameable landscapes

Abstract

This paper outlines the key concepts of opacity, back formation and toponymic activity used by place name historians, and relates them to the naming of contemporary artefacts in the cultural landscape. It categorises place names according to a three-layered analytical model of landscape and argues that place naming is now carried out largely within a cultural framework. Exceptions are names given by modern recreationalists who have regained something of the intimate relationship with the land possessed by earlier agricultural societies. This view is supported by findings that students of landscape architecture have difficulty in naming and describing character where landscapes have been shaped largely by physical and biological processes. It is also consistent with the increasing articulation of landscapes at the cultural level independent of physical and natural process, allowed by the sophistication of modern technology.