Talk:Humber

Comments

This is from the Humber River disamb page, and should probably be worked in here:

"The English Humber is an 50 km estuary that takes the waters of the Rivers Ouse and Trent east to the North Sea. At its mouth it is over 11km wide. The Humber Bridge was built in 1981 to further development along the banks of the river."

Waterguy 20:20, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I think many, if not most, people in North Lincolnshire believe it to be part of the North of England.I think North England is in England. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.16.47.62 (talk • contribs) 15:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

This is a good description, but I miss a map of eastern England with the Humber marked to make myself a picture. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to get "common property" maps. 217.110.99.237 (talk) 10:56, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Etymology

Etymology —Preceding unsigned comment added by Psammead (talk • contribs) 08:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

This section reads very badly & needs rewriting. The 2nd sentence makes almost no sense. It looks as if the writer is suggesting a correspondence between the L. verb abdo and W. afon ddu (which would be silly); even if that's not the case it needs straightening out. I'm sure there's a good case to be made for Humber meaning 'dark river' but this doesn't do it.Costesseyboy (talk) 14:11, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree; also the entire first paragraph appears unsourced, and its claims are completely unsupported by linguistics.

• “Most European hydronyms are Celtic in origin”: This is blatantly false, and whatever source claims this is surely outdated or misinformed.
• “A derivation of Humber from *cym(b)er is supported by the proven Celtic/Germanic sound changes of K to H such as Grimm's Law”: Not only is this worded in a very misleading way (sure, Grimm's law itself is “proven”, but not the claims), but its implications make absolutely no sense. Grimm's law, first of all, is a Germanic sound law and has nothing whatsoever to do with Celtic. Secondly, as an isogloss common to Germanic it was a one-time occurrence in Pre-Proto-Germanic—centuries earlier than the split-up of Proto-Germanic and a millennium or more before Old English even reached Britain. Thus there is no conceivable scenario in which a British toponym from which Humber is derived underwent the effects of Grimm's law.

— 69.120.64.15 (talk) 15:25, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Hey, firstly you are replying to a nine year old comment, the "second sentence" to which that comment refers, has since been corrected and is actually in the second paragraph.

""Most European hydronyms are Celtic in origin”: This is blatantly false"

This is disingenuous. The text (since it's first edit) says "Celtic or Pre-Celtic". This is entirely consistent with the prevailing understanding in European hydronymy since the 1960s. Furthermore, other major watercourses of the area are demonstrably Celtic or Pre-Celtic and it is well established that hydronyms tend to be more conservative than other toponyms.

"whatever source claims this is surely outdated or misinformed"

Any credible sources should be treated as such regardless of individual views on their findings.

"Grimm's law itself is “proven”, but not the claims"

Again, the text since first edit has read "such as Grimm's Law", it is given as an example of sound change, not as THE sound change. However, you are right to say that it could be made clearer that the "proven sound change" is not part of Grimm's Law, particularly regarding the timescales involved. That said, I do not understand the reference to an isogloss here. Are you just trying to say that Germanic languages were not in situ when the name developed?

Finally, it is patently wrong to say Grimm's Law is a "Germanic sound law and has nothing whatsoever to do with Celtic." It is a set of identifiable precepts (consonantal) within Proto-Germanic with noted parallel changes in related groups. In fact, Grimm's Law can only be demonstrated using other IE Languages.

Happy to chat about any of this. Cymrogogoch (talk) 00:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I have reword the etymology so it's more encyclopaedic, and it presents the most likely etymology in phonological terms, I note the Grimm's Law reference has been removed with the edit note "as I have explained" but I am not sure if this refers to the comments here on the talk page or some other forum. Either way, I still feel that Grimm's Law, and the reduction of /kn/ to /n/ in Middle English are relevant examples of the development of the phonology of English (when discussing and caveating "best theories"), but am happy to remove if it is causing confusion.

Happy to chat about any of this. Cymrogogoch (talk) 15:20, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Geobox

I have had a crack at doing a Geobox for the article (having found a good ref whilst doing the Trent), I thought I would drop it here so everyone can have a look in case it needs some discussion. The mouth is described as being between Spurn and Donna Nook, as this is mentioned in the reference. Jokulhlaup (talk) 17:58, 15 October 2013 (UTC). Just noticed that Keith D is on a break, so will wait until he is back before doing anything. Jokulhlaup (talk) 16:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Suggest that you do not use the Geobox as I think there was some discussion of phasing these out because of high overheads in favour of infoboxes. May be use {{infobox river}} instead. Keith D (talk) 21:10, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Also suggest using miles first as usual for UK distances. Keith D (talk) 21:11, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, that’s unfortunate, the two things you suggested as changes are the ones that would be most difficult to alter. Currently the main Humber tribs (Trent, Ouse, and Hull) use a Geobox, so for consistency it would be a good thing to keep them the same. Geoboxes tend to be used in the higher class river articles, and have more features. Some see them as difficult/complex to use, but I have done the difficult bit already. In terms of miles, my understanding was that it only applied to road miles everything else was SI units. The box does show miles as a conversion. Jokulhlaup (talk) 16:51, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Having worked out that individual items can be switched from metric to imperial, and having followed the internicene warfare that passes as a discussion on metric vs imperial at WP:UKGEO, I have altered the length parameter to miles first. Does this work for the article. Jokulhlaup (talk) 17:54, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

As it has all gone a bit WP:SILENT, am assuming there is no issue in implemeting the Geobox. The map has been removed as the article already has a similar one Jokulhlaup (talk) 18:23, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Humber/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

. Inline references require adding using one of the {{Cite}} templates Requires infobox Keith D 18:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC) Still needs refs + info box added reimprove tag BulldozerD11 (talk) 00:55, 5 October 2008 (UTC) Still poorly referenced. Won't change the classifications. --Robert EA Harvey (talk) 14:37, 20 March 2013 (UTC) It is more than a start, so I have made it a C. I'd like to make this a B, but it needs more in-line refs, and a tighter head section Not sure that the definition of 'Riding' belongs here, and in any case Lindsey had 'Ridings' till 1971. some more detail on the various ports and Jetties would be good too. --Robert EA Harvey (talk) 13:14, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

Last edited at 13:21, 15 September 2013 (UTC). Substituted at 18:27, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Map?

Could we have a map of England showing where this river is? I came here looking for an answer to that question and never found it. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 19:00, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

 Done – looks like this was sorted a while ago DBaK (talk) 20:28, 4 March 2024 (UTC)