The Twelve Placenames of Christmas

I had a mad idea to look and see if there were places to fit every line of the famous song The Twelve Days of Christmas. I was actually quite surprised by the results! So armed with the website geotarget.com, I looked up each of the gifts which “my true love gave to me”, and will be sharing them on the blog on the twelve days of Christmas (25th December to 5th January) as just a bit of placename-based fun!

I’ll start off with some number-places to get the ball rolling. There are, confusingly, two places in the Solomon Islands called One, and also one One in Norway, and another One in Papua New Guinea. Confused yet? You will be!

There are two Nine towns, both on the Iberian peninsula: one in Galicia, Spain and the other in Braga, Portugal. Seven is represented as town-names in Diyarbakir, Turkey, in Zambezia, Mozambique, and on the island of Ibiza, Spain. I found two Fours, both of which were in France - one in the Rhone-Alpes region and one in Auvergne. The numbers Five and Six only appear to be used as placenames once a-piece; Five is in Nord-Trondelag, Norway and Six is in West Virginia, USA.

Half of the twelve numbers don’t appear to have towns representing them. These are Two, Three, Eight, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. There are, of course, plenty of places which have the numbers in them - 92 Two-something and 123 Three-something towns and cities, for example - and a lot more landscape features like hills and lakes, but none which are just the number alone.

Do you know of any other number places? Let us know in the comments!

Tune in tomorrow for the first day of Christmas!

 

Karen Bailey
Marketing Manager