Name has with origin and identity to make. Place names are proper names for the inhabited places where people feel affiliated with that particular place, because this is where one was born, or is the place where you moved and where you now have your home. Or their holiday home. Where you have your roots!
A place name or the name of a community, a neighborhood, and at, a place, a farm, a place! It has history, culture, humanity and personality to do.
It doesn't have the zip codes. They have to do with technocracy and systems thinking; not with people, even though the postcodes are meant to make it easier for postal workers to find the right place so that people can be reached by letters sent to each other. There is no cultural expression or feeling behind it unless you count the rationality of postcodes as culture. And there are certainly those who do.
The place names more or less 'disappeared' when the postal service introduced postcodes and closed post offices in villages such as Långå. There may even be a risk that proper names of places will disappear if we settle for coordinates. Hello and welcome to Lat: 62.448902, Long: 13.236122! Wait, what do you say? So Långå, as they used to say!
Some time ago I was asked the question: Why do you say Långåljusnan?? I answered: The Långåljusnan is the demarcated and enclosed part of the Ljusnan that runs through the Långå fishing conservation area. The person I told answered: But the Light is the Light everywhere it flows. Sure, I said, at the 44,3 mil called Lusnan is Lusnan, but Långåljusnan is the two miles that go through the Långå fishery conservation area. Elsewhere it may be called something else, for example 'Melanljusnan'.
Does it matter what different places are called?? And, it does! It matters a lot because each place is typical and contains its own characteristics, no story, their culture, its characteristics and its meaning. It is also practical, among other things for directions and for security reasons, to be able to indicate a specific place where you are. A place that has its own name, a proper name! When you hear about someone catching a nice fish in Ljusnan, you know it was taken somewhere along the forty miles. But what fun is that?
Carl Linnaeus, the father of flowers, claimed that the plant that did not have its own name did not exist. This is also true of other things. He probably thought it was good that our stretch of river is called Långåljusnan. It matches what it was officially called in his time: A long time ago !
The fact that Långåljusnan now has its own name is also important from another point of view. It is a demarcated part between two power plant dams. Over time, this leads to the development of local varieties of original fish strains, including the Lujsnanöringen. The Light Industry we have today will have adapted to its own, local conditions in the future and formed its own 'family' with what is typical for it. We invest in it in Långåfisket! Long eel light trout!
Helge Jonsson/ Summer Chronicle July 2019