It’s all in Names on the Land, George Rippey Stewart’s soon-to-be-reissued 1945 book about how America’s “creeks and valleys, rivers and mountains, streets and schools, towns and cities, counties and states, the country and continent itself” were named. In Slate, Matt Weiland calls the tome “a masterpiece of American writing and American history.” Among the tidbits he highlights: “The original name proposed for the state that became New Jersey was Albania.”

Related on World Hum:
* What’s in a Place Name?
* Esquire Complains About Hotel Bar Names

Or maybe not. John Hodgman threw it out there on a “Daily Show” segment this week, his personal preference over staycation. Didn’t get much traction with it, or “hometel,” either. His parody of “I’ve Been Everywhere,” though? Excellent. Video below. 

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Why, that’s an altarcation.

Move over, glampers. The holidaters—couples traveling together in the very early stages of a relationship, sometimes even a second or third date—have arrived. And according to this Globe and Mail article, a number of large hotel chains are going out of their way to accommodate the travel-as-icebreaker scenario. Special arrangements include two separate bathrooms in one suite, or even two conjoined rooms. “If they don’t end up using the second room,” one hotel employee notes, “they’ll get a 50-per-cent refund.”

Related on World Hum:
* New Addition to the Travel Lexicon: ‘Staycation’
* New Addition to the Travel Lexicon: ‘Toeing the Line’

Thanks to rising fuel costs and fears about the economy, experts say more Americans these days taking “staycations”—yes, vacations in which they stay home. The Los Angeles Times covers the trend today and uses the term, and although I’ve only begun seeing “staycation” used recently, a Google search turns up references in 2006, and I’m willing to bet the expression dates back earlier than that. It’s yet another groan-inducing travel term. Need some more? How about going glamping, or taking an oblication?

Miles Kington “satirised the earnest but doomed efforts of native English speakers to handle French,” as the BBC put it. (Example: Bill Wyman’s remark, “Je suis un rock star.") Kington coined the term “Franglais,” and his books on the topic included Let’s Parler Franglais! He died Wednesday, prompting the fitting BBC headline: “Au revoir Mister Franglais.”

Related on World Hum:
* New Addition to the Travel Lexicon: ‘Geotourism’

In our ongoing quest to chronicle the comings and goings in the travel lexicon we bring you “geotourism,” a term describing travel that, in the AP’s words, “focuses on a destination’s unique culture and history and aims to have visitors help enrich those qualities.” Coined several years ago by the National Geographic Society’s Jonathan B. Tourtellot, the term hasn’t yet caught on among most travelers. But according to the AP, “it’s on the lips of travel professionals who describe it as a step beyond the better-known environmentally friendly ecotourism. While geotourism encourages treading lightly on nature, it’s also about authenticity and making a place better by visiting and spending money.”

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In our ongoing quest to chronicle the comings and goings in the travel lexicon we bring you “toeing the line,” which The Atlantic’s Word Fugitive columnist Barbara Wallraff has declared the winner in a contest to determine “a word to describe the moment of undignified vulnerability that people in airport security lines experience when they have to take off their shoes.” Dick Engel of Bark River, Michigan submitted the winning entry, though I liked many other suggestions better. Among them: Shoemiliation, unshoddenfreude, pedrified, JimmyChoogrined, steparation anxiety and pedanoia.

Related on World Hum:
* New Travel Word of the Day: ‘Glamping’
* Don’t be a Touron!: New Additions to the Travel Lexicon
* Is It Time To Retire ‘Ugly American’ From the Travel Lexicon?

Photo by Daveybot via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

There’s at least one person in nearly every great place you travel to who will look you in your dazzled eyes and tell you in no uncertain terms that you really missed it, that you should have been there 5, 10, 20 years ago, when the place was truly magical and not overrun with people just like you. John Flinn calls it the Kathmandu Syndrome. As he defines it: “Every place used to be better, at least in the eyes of those who were there then. Now all these places are blighted, charmless, overcrowded and hopelessly touristy.” In a fine column in the San Francisco Chronicle, he explores this all-too-common expression of the hyper-competitive streak in some travelers. 

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Anthropologists, New York City cabbies, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke, New York Times writer Paul Vitello and many others agree: We need to rethink the use of the term “ugly American.” “Let it be said that no group holds a monopoly on the title of ‘ugly,’” writes Vitello in Sunday’s paper. “Tip-stiffing, line-jumping, excessive price-haggling, sidewalk-blocking-when-stopping- suddenly-to-take-pictures- of-a-person-playing-the- steel-drums—none of these are unique to any national group.” As evidence, Vitello points to the recent Expedia survey of European hoteliers that ranked French, Indian, Chinese, Russian and British tourists as the worst tourist nations in the world.

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Translation: Uh, glamorous camping. 

Daily Candy has posted another round of its excellent travel lexicon. Among the travel-related words suggested by the site’s readers: touron (n. tourist + moron.  ”Don’t even bother with the Louvre on a Saturday. It’s overrun with tourons."), gabbin pressure (n. sense of obligation to chat to the passenger next to you during a flight. ”I’m just recovering from gabbin pressure—I sat next to a real flight dependent.") and, my favorite, travelanche (n. the state of affairs when one little thing goes wrong and then everything snowballs toward disaster. ”It started as a minor delay in Seattle and ended up a full-blown travelanche involving lost luggage, bad airport food, and dire intestinal consequences."). Also: Read last year’s first batch of the Daily Candy travel lexicon.