River names :British usage

[fredpuli47]

Why do we in Britain talk of the River Thames, the River Tees and so on when we don't say the Bridge Albert for the Albert Bridge and the Bridge Humber and the Bridge Tower etc for bridges ? Americans talk of the Thames River (!) and the Hudson River etc, which seems more logical.

[chrispybacon]

We often differ fom our cousins across th pool.
Ther is no logical explanation that I know of. We've always done it our way. Viva la differance!

[football21]

At some point they wanted everything the opposite of English. The very country the were trying to get away from. They have had language influences from Spain, France, Portugal, Holland, Mexico. The grammer is going to be the other way around.

[Quizmonster]

As long ago as the 1300s, a normal structure in British English was one such as 'the river of Danube', 'the river of Wye' and so on. Over time, we just dropped the 'of' in the normal linguistic simplification process.
Americans would appear to have used the name as a form of adjective rather than as a noun, in much the same way as we might speak of 'a London Taxi' and so on...hence 'the Hudson River'.
Both processes seem perfectly reasonable and there was, of course, no question of their merely seeking to have "everything the opposite" of our method.

[Quizmonster]

Fred, please see my response in the Myths category re Greek tragedy.

[fredpuli47]

QM, that makes sense but now I have to puzzle over Mount Everest, not Everest Mountain, and the American Mount McKinley, not McKinley Mount .

[Quizmonster]

The Old English word for 'mount' was the same word minus its 'o'...I daren't actually write that in case the AnswerBank censor is unhappy with its racial implications! However, from the 12th century on, the word took on the influence of French 'mont'. I'm no expert in that language, but don't they generally put the 'Mont' before the name as in 'Mont Blanc', 'Montreal', 'Montmartre' etc? Perhaps, post Norman Conquest, we just took on the frenchified approach....hence Mount Everest etc.

[Quizmonster]

Just as an afterthought, to show my earlier answer doesn't always hold good, France does have its Mont St Michel whilst England has its St Michael's Mount!