Methodical Synonyms

The west side of Newfoundland seems to buck the trend of imaginative names. Here are variations of the same words, as if someone gave this part of the province one of those magnetic poetry fridge collections.

I know why they did it. This was the French Shore for almost 200 years, where France was given the right to settle and fish from north to south, from the Strait of Belle Isle to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and all the place names were French. Then, after a lot of water under a lot of bridges, France sold it to the British in 1904. 

There are still a large number of French names, but many were also either Anglicized versions or changed entirely.

Unfortunately, whoever decided to change the names of villages and rivers had a very limited vocabulary and came up with a variety of names that used combinations of the same words over and over:

Eastern Brook

Western Brook Pond

River of Ponds

Pond Cove

Shoal Cove

Shoal Brook

Big Brook

Main Brook

Steady Brook

Island Pond Brook

Woody Point

Rocky Harbour

Harbour Deep

Flat Bay

East Bay

Shallow Bay

Lower Cove

Berry Hill 

Berry Hill Pond

Berry Head Pond

Little River

Broad Cove River

Southeast River

South River

North River

North East Brook

North West Brook

Southwest Brook

Ok, I guess you get the idea.