When entering or leaving the museum through the main gates, you stand at the junction of Church Street and Rotchell Road, continue down the hill towards St Michael’s Bridge Road and the traffic lights and you will cross the end of Rotchell Park.
Image used with permission from a private collection
“Rotchell” is of course a surname, with roots in Norman French, probably coming to these islands after the Norman Conquest of 1066. However, the word is also a Scots exonym for the city of La Rochelle on the western coast of France. Such exonyms are common in English (e.g. Munich and Vienna for München and Wien respectively) but are less widely known in Scots. Unsurprisingly, given the Auld Alliance and strong trading and political relationships between Scotland and France, many Scots exonyms are for locations in France. However, research for the Scots Language Centre has unearthed more that are further afield including Leesbon (Lisbon), Reffel (Tallinn) and Queensbrig (Kaliningrad).
