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Thursday 4 December 2008

Mind Your Language

Dot Wordsworth on the anagram Underground Map

During my rather dry investigation last week of apostrophes on the London Underground map, I found something far more interesting. It is the anagram Underground map invented two years ago by the pseudonymous Barry Heck (after the great Underground mapper Harry Beck).

Transport for London, as they call themselves at the moment, asserted, no doubt correctly, their own copyright in the map, and clamped down on reproduction of the anagram version. But the anagram names of the stations are not their copyright and may be discussed without locking the door.

The anagrams were apparently done with an online anagram generator. To make them with a paper and pencil would be more satisfying, as crossword-solvers appreciate. Nevertheless, the choice of anagrams is generally pleasing and cumulatively funny, as lists can be. I shall let you work them out for yourselves — you could always refer to a map.

A clutch of animal names is spread out over the network: Ram Shame, Burst Racoon, Ibex Drug, Viper Ale, Newt Coast, Emu Sprint, Dodo Ravens, Snail Salt, Elk Ramp. There are very clever-sounding anagrams, of which my favourite is Swearword & Ethanol. Others include Rubber Synod, Halogen Suit, Filth Drones, Womb Portents and Scuba Horrors.

Some are mildly scabrous, as if from the tongue of Rambling Syd Rumpo: Primo Urinals, Perky Wamble, Spank Acorn, Queer Spank, Erect Bone, Flat Plunker.

There is something attractive in plain words which sound just as likely names of stations as the real Cockfosters: The Orchids, Pig Pen, Raging Hell, and All Things. Indeed I once thought I heard an announcement at Bank: ‘This train is for Everywhere.’ It was only for Edgware, though.

As for Bank, it was turned into Nabk, which is, as I did not know, a name for the Ziziphus lotus, the edible fruit of which was popularly connected with the Homeric food of forgetting. The thorns of one species are also popularly identified with Christ’s crown of thorns. Dean Stanley spelt the word nabk in a book called Sinai and Palestine. Edwin Arnold in his little-read Light of the World spells it nebbuk, which wouldn’t do for Bank. The word is Arabic in origin and would ordinarily be transliterated these days a nabq.

Since anagram machines have spoilt the art, its needs a little genius injected by people like Barry Heck to make them fun again.

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