No. 224 - Penrith

I checked the weather on my gPhone today and it gave me the current forecast for a town called Penrith. I refreshed the screen and it still showed Penrith, 51 degrees, party cloudy in a night sky.

I googled it and found two Penriths: one in England and one in Australia. Since it was day-time in England and night-time in Australia, I suppose my phone thinks I'm in Australia.

I learned that Penrith in Australia was named after the town of Penrith in England. Go figure. How it got the name is unclear. One theory is that in the early days, development in Penrith was entirely on one road, like the English Penrith, and someone familiar with both spotted the similarity and suggested the name. The earliest known written reference to the name Penrith dates back to 1819. Penrith is a suburb in western Sydney.