> This reminds me - my sister returned from NZ and reported that there's a
> place called Ben Nevis there, a name that also occurs near Santa Cruz,
> California; and asked: "Who was Ben Nevis??"

By an odd bit of synchronicity, I was just looking at a photograph of
Ben Nevis, Svalbard, about ten minutes before reading your mail.

I hesitate to say that Scots were keen travellers - with the small
matter of the Highland Clearances, they often had little choice in the
matter. But the end result seems to be a lot of Scots names around the
world. It is, for instance, a shorter trip between Dundee and Glencoe
in South Africa than it is between Dundee and Glen Coe in Scotland.
And an item on our local Scottish news a few nights back told the
story of a man from Aberdeen who's making a hobby of visiting other
Aberdeens - he had covered 30-odd so far, with a few more still to go.

Grant