Talk:Glen

River??
From where does the claim that glen can mean river come from? I've never heard of this. An Muimhneach Machnamhach 16:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

This makes no sense. A glen is "anything but a valley"?????LD 01:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

==

In the dictionary, glen literally means a small, narrow secluded valley. According to a cheap baby-naming book, (from which I was named) it means "From the valley" which is dubious at best. The Irish/Gaelic origin coincides, but the definition doesn't fit at all.

Someone please flag this wikipedia entry as contested. It's certainly wrong. Twisted Wrister 02:53, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Valley valley
I've removed this sentence:


 * The word is sometimes found in tautological placenames where its meaning was opaque to a new linguistic community, an example perhaps being Glendale (literally "valley valley") which is a combination of Norse "dale" and Gaelic "glen".

because when you click on Glendale you get this discordant explanation:


 * The Gaelic name, Gleann Daill, is derived from gleann, meaning "valley", which usually refers to a harsher environment that can be steep and/or rocky,[2] and dail meaning "field, dale, meadow, plain or river-meadow", which usually refers to fertile, arable land beside water. The Ordnance Survey (2005) suggest that dail may also mean "level field by a river".[3] This makes the English translation read: "valley of river-meadows" or "valley of level fields by a river".

--46.25.48.186 (talk) 18:44, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

This article does not help me understand what a glen is. The first paragraph speaks of a valley and a ravine. I know what each of those are. However, the picture shows neither a valley nor a ravine. It shows what I'd call a creek. A ravine is at least an order of magnitude larger, and a valley 2 orders or more larger. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C0:8600:4390:8CFD:97D1:E9BD:3D24 (talk) 20:10, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * When I was in school at Glenalmond College in the 50s, I understood glen, logie and strath to be fairly well defined geographical/topological terms for successive stages of a highland river. The glen is a narrow valley high up towards the river source. Purists insisted that the college was not in the glen but in the logie, since the Almond valley is quite broad there. WP doesn't have an entry for 'logie' and I haven't so far been able to find a good definition online. Of course, outside Scotland, 'glen' can be expected to have a broader usage. --D Anthony Patriarche, BSc (talk) 21:40, 9 July 2020 (UTC)