No Man's Land or Nomansland

[burlington]

Contemporary accounts of the war often use Nomansland rather than the phrase we, or at least I, have become accustomed to ie No Man's Land.

I find this disconcerting becasue when I read it I have to ask myself 'where is that place?'

What do you think?

Martin

[Paul Reed]

It depends what you mean by "contemporary accounts"; most war diaries I have seen use no man's land or No Man's Land. I don't ever remember reading or seeing nomansland, to be honest.

Would be interested to know where you have seen this?

[burlington]

Paul

I have noticed it particularly in Captain J C Dunn's 'The War the Infantry knew'

At least in the first 108 pages when it is used to the exclusion of anything else. I am still reading the book!

[John_Hartley]

I can't remember seeing anywhere else BUT in TWTIK.

John

[Desmond7]

Is there a definitive period when No Man's Land becomes an accepted term?

And was it a press invention .. or military terminology pre-dating war?

I bet it was a lot easier than writing 'that fireswept area between us and the Germans' a lot easier for pressmen!

Des

[John_Hartley]

I find this disconcerting becasue when I read it I have to ask myself 'where is that place?'

inthecontextofthisforumitsthebitofagreatwarbattlefieldthatliesbetweenthebritisha

ndgermanfrontlinetrenchsystemusuallyfoundfullyofbarbedwireandlotsofdeadbodies.

John

[PhilB]

Like you gents, I assumed it was a WW1 term, but the Shorter Oxford gives:-

No man`s land - A piece of waste or unowned land; in early use as the name of a plot of ground, lying outside the north wall of London, and used as a place of execution. Also, nautical, A space amidships used to contain any blocks, ropes, tackles etc necessary on the forecastle; Military - an unoccupied space between fronts of opposing forces.

My 1932 dictionary gives it as no-man`s-land in the main part and no man`s land in the WW1 addendum.

Which doesn`t answer your question! Phil B

[SOMMESOLDIER]

Hi All,

Only ever seen 'No Man's Land', but am about to read The War The Infantry New !!

Cheers

Tim.

[ChrisC]

Useless trivia time. The old fort off Portsmouth is spelled Nomansland

[stevew]

Useless trivia time. The old fort off Portsmouth is spelled Nomansland

Nomansland is also a village in the New Forest..................I pass it every day on my way to work

[carninyj]

As an outsider, an Ulsterman, could your 'nomansland' be a derivitive of 'Norman's Land'? I ask only because I notice Stevew says it's a village in the New Forest. The New Forest was certainaly created by the Normans, by William I, as a hunting ground; it would also be royal estate and in terms of the feudal system the property of the feudal lord, royal estate of the king, and hence 'No Man's Land' or, from a Saxon perspective, ' Norman's land'.

Well, it was just a thought.

Regards

Carninyj

[PhilB]

There`s a Nomansland near Tiverton in Devon. Phil B

[ianw]

Nomansland in the New Forest certainly has Norman connections. Very close by William Rufus was famously killed in 1100 in a hunting "accident"

[Gary Samson]

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable (15th Ed):

No man's land. The name given to the area between hostile lines of entrenchments or to any space contested by both sides and belonging to neither. In the early open-field system of agriculture [in which villages cultivated their individual 'strips' of land in unfenced arable fields], the name was used for odd scraps of land, also called "Jack's land" or "anyone's land".

Gary

[Gary Samson]

The Stand To! 'Notes for the Guidance of Contributors' recommends "no man's land" (no capitals).

Gary

[PhilB]

I don`t recall seeing the term "no man`s land" used in any pre WW1 context to indicate land between opposing armies. Not in the USCW, say. Unless one of our American friends......? Phil B

[Chris Boonzaier]

Maybe it has to do with the fact that the German version is very similar and is written in one word.

if you read German and English boks on the war it sometimes get a bit mixed up.

all the best

Chris

[Robert Dunlop]

Des

There is an interesting article about the history of the term 'no-man's-land' by Malcolm Brown in 'The Great War', edited by Robert Cowley.

"In its ancient form of 'nanesmanes-lande' [the term] is as old as the Domesday Book, and in England and the Middle Ages it was applied to all kinds of unowned or unwanted ground - generally waste or barren stretches between defined areas such as provinces or kingdoms. There is a scatter of small areas bearing the name No Man's Land or Nomansland around England today, some among them significantly sited on ancient regional boundaries. In the traditional open-field system, it was a useful label for odd scraps of ground here and there, which also attracted the name of 'Jack's land', or anyone's land. Daniel Defoe used it in 1719 in the sequel to Robinson Crusoe as a 'kind of border'. Thomas Hughes wrote in 1881 of 'a small bit of noman's land in the woods'.

The use of no-man's land in its now-classic and most widely understood form [was] according to that magisterial source of linguistic wisdom, the Oxford English Dictionary, [in] 1908 in which the phrase was used in relation to the terrain between two opposing lines in war."

The 1908 definition is thought to derive from an article on the future of war written by Ernest Swinton (some may recognise his pseudonym 'Ole Luk-Oie'. In The Point of View, Swinton wrote 'Here and there in that wilderness of dead bodies - the dreadful No-Man's Land between the opposing lines deserted guns, showed up singly or in groups....'

Robert

[Terry Carter]

In the hand-out I was given by Pen & Sword books whilst putting together 'Birmingham Pals,' I was instructed to us 'No Man's Land.'

Regards

Terry

[David Filsell]

I have also seenm it rendered as No Mans' Land!

Regards

David

[Gary Samson]

I have also seenm it rendered as No Mans' Land!

Probably by the same individuals who insist on putting an apostrophe in CD's, PC's and the 1990's. Let's not go there.

Gary