Dollywaggon Pike

Recently I posted this image to various social media forums where we hang out with the comment:

Hmmm ... the Ordnance Survey are at it again. Two "G"s on 1:25K, only one on 1:50K.

"At it again" was a reference to a variation in spelling of Longsleddale I came across a couple of weeks ago, but one could argue that the first was just poor kerning. This one was more blatant: a genuine variation in spelling between the latest Ordnance Survey 1:50K and the 1:25K maps (the Ordnance Survey Open Data mapping also uses the one "G" spelling, see the map on our Dollywaggon Pike page).

I'd spotted the discrepancy while proof reading Beth's walk St Sunday Crag and Grisedale Tarn where, in step 2, she says:

At the top of this rise the view opens ahead to the dramatic combes and ridges of Dollywaggon Pike on the southern end of the Helvellyn range, and down to the floor of Grisedale valley.

And she had spelled "Dollywaggon Pike" with one "G". I needed to look the hill up in the Database of British Hills which we use in our hill finder and I was surprised to find no trace of it. Eventually I found it by searching for "Dolly" (the database uses the double "G" spelling).

Anyway I made the posting and afterwards there was some discussion on our Facebook page which lead me to do some further research.

I clearly wasn't the first one to go this way. The Wikipedia page for Dollywaggon Pike has a whole section on Name which notes the difference I'd found. It points out that Wainwright used "Dollywaggon Pike" in his The Eastern Fells guide. It also says:

As of 2005, the "Dollywagon" spelling is slightly more common in online references.

And that reminded me that Google have an amazing tool called Ngrams which lets you compare the number of times a phrase has occurred in books over time to another phrase. So I tried the two variations in there. There's nothing before 1860 so here's the Ngram for 1860-2008 (Google currently have no data in their database for books published after 2008).

So historically two "G"s is the clear winner but in this millennium it's been neck and neck. In fact if you drill down to just this millennium one "G" is marginally ahead:

However if you restrict the search to books which Google believes are in "British English" only the result is rather different.

So that's a clear win for two "G"s.

Anyway as Wainwright and the Database of British Hills prefer two "G"s we will be sticking to that spelling too.

Falcon Crag and Dollywaggon Pike from Deepdale Hause

Tagged: maps

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