Why Is This Village Called "Y"?

本站添加: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Hello, bonjour and salutiz and welcome to a cheeky little bonus video because after my last video where we tried to find the village with the longest name in Europe, approximately 10 billion of you commented saying, "Well, now you have to go and find the place with the shortest name." And as it happens, I fully agree with you.

[00:00:24]So you join me in northern France in the Valley of the Sum, an area that was almost completely devastated during World War I. But thankfully these days it's a lot more peaceful around here and many of the destroyed towns and villages have grown back from the ruins, including this one.

[00:00:43]This village ahead of me here is the village with the shortest name in France. In fact, it's the shortest name in the world, although it does share the record with about 30 other places.

[00:00:58]This is the village of E, spelled Y, as in just the letter Y, and it's one of a small group of places around the world whose names are made of one single letter. The list also includes a river D in Oregon, a Micronesian municipality called U, and 14 different villages across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, all spelled with a single letter A. But since I wanted to get this video out fairly quickly by my standards, I decided to visit the one that was only a day trip from where I live. And while I'm here, I just have one question.

[00:01:37]Why?

[00:01:39]Why is Y called Y?

[00:01:43]Well, in French, the letter Y pronounced E is actually a pretty common word. It usually translates into English as there. For example, if you wanted to say we are there, you could say.

[00:01:56]If you wanted to say shall we go there, you could say oniva. So wait, is this village literally just called there?

[00:02:07]>> Well, in a way, yes, I suppose. But that's not actually why it's called e.

[00:02:15]If you go back far enough in the historic records, and I mean far enough back that the records are written in Latin by some medieval monk, the original name of the village was Iakum or possibly is depending on which medieval monk you believe. However, the people of France have never really been bothered about pronouncing all the letters in their words. And nowhere is that more true than in North where they definitely couldn't be bothered with pronouncing Latin. So the village of Matanyakum became Matini, Felvyakum became Falvi, and Yakum became just E.

[00:02:54]At which point they realized they couldn't really drop any more letters, and it stayed the same ever since. The unusual name confuses delivery drivers and baffles IT systems to this day. But in a village that has a thousand years of history and has survived worse things than a few missing packages, they wouldn't want it any other way.

[00:03:25]And if you'd like to see the beautiful village of E, the best way to get here is by car or by bicycle. There is technically a bus stop, but the only service that calls here is a once a day school bus for the local kids, so it's not much use to anyone else.

[00:03:39]Alternatively, you could do what I did, get a train to a place called Nell and then hike from there, but you end up walking along some quite busy roads that weren't really designed to be walked along, and I wouldn't really recommend it. And as always, thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you soon.