By pure chance, I notice that the last 3 summit’s I’ve activated are all called Sugar Loaf. Anyone else ever managed such a run?
(that said, there are 9 "Sugar Loaf"s and 3 "Sugarloaf"s in ZL in the SOTA database, so it’s probably the easiest name to acheive it with).
And what is a sugar loaf anyway … guess that’s one of those things I’m too young to know.
Actually - lets have some stats for ZL summit names (note this is a simple ‘group by name’ will not pick up the dual-language names so there are probably more):
| name | count |
|---|---|
| Sugar Loaf | 9 |
| Hikurangi | 7 |
| Rangitoto | 6 |
| Mount Ross | 6 |
| Saddle Hill | 5 |
| Mount Misery | 5 |
| Mount Alexander | 5 |
| Round Hill | 5 |
| Mount Jackson | 4 |
| Pinnacle | 4 |
| Mount Campbell | 4 |
| Dog Hill | 4 |
| Conical Hill | 4 |
| Bald Hill | 4 |
| Maunganui | 4 |
| Mount Brown | 4 |
| Puketapu | 4 |
| Mount Evans | 4 |
| Mount Horrible | 4 |
| Mount Bruce | 3 |
| Mount Wilson | 3 |
| Ben More | 3 |
| Mount Williams | 3 |
| Mount Stuart | 3 |
| Mount Prospect | 3 |
| Mount Cameron | 3 |
| Green Hill | 3 |
| Rough Ridge | 3 |
| The Sentinel | 3 |
| Big Hill | 3 |
| Ngapuketurua | 3 |
| Castle Hill | 3 |
| Wether Hill | 3 |
| Blue Mountain | 3 |
In ZL the names are still quite new… and so you can probably look for a direct connection…
In Europe the names (if there were any - that often came later with tourism) are a linguistic development and have also changed over the centuries.
There is a very good article from the German Alpine Club… unfortunately only in German… but maybe you can translate it section by section with a translation program
73 Armin
This happens everywhere. Mountains are named by the locals, not the map makers. It doesn’t matter if someone over yonder has a “Sugar Loaf”, this is our “Sugar Loaf”, so there! Why is it called that? Because from my farm it looks like one! (I have been told that long ago sugar was sold in a big solid lump and when you used it you broke a piece off and ground it up.)
Mountain names are often descriptive. In Scotland there are several Bein Mores (big mountain), or Bein Dearg (red mountain) and in Wales there is Tryfan (three peaks) and so on.
The Original Sugar Loaf is in South Wales GW/SW-011. A fine hill in the shape of a Sugar Loaf…
And all those “Sugar Loaf’s” pops up as a summit names everywhere the welsh chose to emigrate - which is quite a few places !
Indeed. Which might explain why many of them look nothing like a sugar loaf. Named for nostalgia, rather than appearance.
I agree with that! And why I need to be on the ball with google maps, and not end up in small town USA when navigating to home in Bristol.
What I’m curious about is have any Gaelic or Welsh summit names made it out of the UK !!!
And if antipodeans can pronounce them any better than I can!
There are definitely a few handful mountains in the colonies that were named by homesick settlers.
VK3 has Ben Cruachan, there are seven Ben Nevis’ across VK,ZL and W7 and ZS has a Ben Macdhui.
One word that’s not used in UK mountain names is Butte. However there are 5 in FL, 21 in KLA, 6 in VE, 2 in VO, 2 in VY, and hundreds in the main US.
Butte is the French word for mound or hillick. Pronounced Bute.
There are also the summits that repeat themselves. For example, G/NP-016 Dodd Fell Hill, G/CE-003 Bredon Hill and G/NP-005 Pendle Hill all mean Hill Hill Hill.
My mother (ex-school teacher and Dundonian) spends her life correcting people who mention Dundee’s Law Hill. They are saying hill hill. The correct name is Dundee Law, or just The Law.
Not a hill, but Lake Derwentwater would be one of the best for that:
Lake water water water!
I blame the English map makers. Not understanding that pen, dodd, law, low, bre, don, pen… all meant hill in Celtic, Norse, Ancient Briton, Scots, Doric, etc had to add the word hill to the end of the name when putting it on the map.
Fraser,
Don’t forget Arthur’s Seat. I’ve been to both but only activated the VK3 one.
73
Ron
VK3AFW
Identical summit names happen in all languages. Here in Austria you could busy yourself activating mountains called Buchberg (“Beech Mountain”, latin “Fagus”) for at least a week. There are 4 within an hour where I live and some more further away.
In my three week hike in the USA I passed over two Chestnut Knobs (one a SOTA) and several Locust Knobs and Little Balds.
73 Heinz
High Knob in the US. There are 17 of them. 4 are in Virginia, 5 are in West Virginia.
There are at least 2 Cove Mountains in VA (I’ve activated both).
And Blue Mountain! There’s only one in Virginia, but more than I cared to count nationwide.
I chalk it up to people not being very creative in their names. 
Chris
Even the original Sugar Loaf only looks like a sugar loaf from end on, from the approach path its just a long hump. A nice summit but it tends to be rather crowded in fine weather!
For reference, a sugar loaf was a tall cone with a rounded top. I’ve never seen one but there are pictures on line.
But if Sugar Loaf was its original name…What is/was it called by the local Welsh speaking peoples?
Many of the non English names are simply descriptions of the mountains or hills.
Scottish, Welsh & Irish are full of them.`
Aonach Eagach a jagged multi pointed peak in Glencoe simply means “Notched ridge”
There are lots of Ben Mores, or Mhors, which simply means ~Big hill/mountain. So there are lots of Grey mountains.,& black mountains (Bienn Dubh etc., etc.,_ Fraser will know of lots of others.
So I guess when the first English settlers arrived in the ‘colonies’, they didn’t bother ask the locals for their names of hills or if the name was used elsewhere in the country… They simple used that name because it was a suitable description or whatever - so you end up with multiple hills with the same descriptive or familiar name.
Y Fâl
Rick
That definitely doesn’t translate to Sugar Loaf!
