Hmmm, where did my house go?
Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:34 pm
Totally apropos of absolutely nothing, but it is something that interests me, the town in which the incident took place has an interesting name: its current and long ago name is/was Nizhny Novgorod, but for a time during the Soviet period it was known as Gorky, after the Marxist writer (who may have been killed by Staling, but who knows for sure).
Nizhny Novgorod, itself, is a cool name: it is related to the historic city of Novgorod (there are many, but this is the famous one that was associated with Alexander Nevsky, and in which Ivan the Terrible is supposed to have butchered tens of thousands of his own people for no reason at all). 'Nizhny' means 'Lower,' and refers to its geographic location relative to the original Novgorod; 'Novgorod' is a combination of two words, 'novii' (meaning 'new') and 'gorod' (meaning 'town,' it's related to the 'grad' that was part of Stalingrad, Volgograd, Leningrad, etc.). So Nizhny Novgorod means 'Lower Newton.' Catchy name for a town.