After having finished my article about Alcercthe – which is a nonsense name, the result of a failed OCR of Alcorcillo – I googled with that quite unique name.
Amazingly, there were many hits. Lots of sites adopted the name without question, for example to display photographs. Others hope to sell property or let out an apartment there, apparently with so little knowledge of the local market that they didn’t even check the name of the village.
Fortunately, there are also still people who are aware of the world around them, check things and mention it when they aren’t right. I quote a few of those:
A Geocaching page, where someone who calls himself, or themselves, macpintosh wrote on 28 November 2010:
“Cache de pequeño
tamaño situado en la fuente-lavadero de Alcorcillo
(Zamora). Si se busca en Google Maps no aparecerá,
hay que buscarlo como Alcercthe.
El coche se puede dejar al final del pueblo,
y dar un agradable paseo hasta el cache y si
se continua por el camino llegareis hasta una
fuente con una balsa que en verano se habilita
como piscina.”
Spanish is not my forte so I do not venture to fully translate this. If I understand it correctly, the idea is that there is a spring near the village, with a washing place. There is also a pond which in summer can be used as a swimming pool.
The sentence starting “Si se busca [...]” means: ‘If you search [with the name ‘Alcorcillo’] in Google Maps, it doesn’t appear, you must search on ‘Alcercthe’ ’.
OK, that much has been corrected by now: Google Maps now finds Alcorcillo both with its true name and with its mangled OCR name.
This is a Facebook group about Alcorcillo. Someone called Sergio Poyo Castaño commented on 2 September 2010:
“[L]lo que no me gusta es que en google maps aparezca Alcercthe en vez de Alcorcillo [...]”, or in English: ‘What I don’t like is that in Google Maps you see the name Alcercthe instead of Alcorcillo.’
Here I found this short remark:
“Alcorcillo ( no Alcercthe”
“Un pueblo Extraordinario”
which means:
‘Alcorcillo (not Alcercthe) – an extraordinary village!’
I wonder if it is. If I’m ever near it, I’ll go and look.
Copyright © 2012, R. Harmsen, all rights reserved.