The River Wild

Kyle   Thu May 25, 2006 4:55 pm GMT
I was just watching this movie and frankly, I cannot understand the title.
It would make more sense to me if it was "The Wild River".

Anybody?
Fredrik from Norway   Thu May 25, 2006 5:38 pm GMT
The river might be called "Wild", if not it's just an old, poetic form of saying "the wild river".
Uriel   Fri May 26, 2006 10:29 am GMT
Like Freddie said, it's poetic and old-fashioned. Sounds more romantic that way. You will see that noun + adjective form a lot when people are trying to be evocative. You won't hear it in spoken conversation usually, though -- it's more of a literary device.
Aquatar   Fri May 26, 2006 8:47 pm GMT
I agree that in this case, it sounds like it is meant to be poetic.

However, from what I understand, when naming rivers there is a difference between BE and AE, in that in Britain the name of the river comes last i.e. the River Thames, but in America the name of the river comes first i.e. the Hudson River.

Is this correct?
Uriel   Sat May 27, 2006 10:39 am GMT
Generally for rivers you are correct, but for American lakes it can be either/or -- you have Canandaigua Lake in NY, but Lake Okeechobee in FL and Lake Tahoe in CA/NV. And the Great Lakes are always Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, etc -- never reversed.

Of course, if the river's name is in Spanish -- like the Rio Grande, Rio Puerco, Rio Lindo, etc., the order is preserved ("rio" means "river"). And if the river is well-known enough, the "River" part is often dropped altogether, as in the Mississippi, the Colorado, the Danube, the Nile, the Volga, the Amazon, etc.