The Top 10 Top 10s of 2018

A round-up of the best Top 10 lists of the year

As Dolly Parton once sang, ‘Love is like a little chicken of the summer’. Well, she may have done on her Welsh tours (Getty)

Thanks to all who have contributed to the Top 10s that have appeared every weekend in The Independent on Sunday and on The Independent website since Worst Beatles Songs in 2013. The 2014 book, Listellany: a Miscellany of Very British Top Tens, from Politics to Pop, is still available if you know where to look.

Here are 10 of my favourites from this year.

Lost Names of Cities

1. Monkchester. Previously Pons Aelius, later Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

2. Lygos. Then Byzantium, Augusta Antonina, Constantinople and finally Istanbul.

3. Tenochtitlan. Now Mexico City.

4. Philadelphia. Previously Rabbath Ammon, now Amman, capital of Jordan.

5. New Amsterdam. Briefly New Orange, now New York.

6. Titograd. Now Podgorica, capital of Montenegro.

7. Saigon. Now Ho Chi Minh City.

8. Canton. Bad western attempt at Guangdong, confusing the province with its main city, Guangzhou.

9. Tsaritsyn. Then Stalingrad, now Volgograd.

10. Analamanga. Now Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar.

Timespan Quirks

1. Cleopatra’s reign, 51-30BC, was closer to the present day than to the building of the Great Pyramid, c. 2560BC.

2. Horatia Nelson, the daughter of Lord Nelson who saw wooden ships defend Britain, could have met Winston Churchill, who led the country in a war in which nuclear bombs were used.

3. The siege of Mafeking in 1899 was closer to the year of my birth, 1958, than I am now. (This is a good game: subtract your age from your birth year.)

4. Irene Triplett was still collecting her US Civil War widow’s pension last year.

5. Nintendo was founded the same year that Vincent Van Gogh painted The Starry Night: 1889.

6. Tyrannosaurus, 66-68m years ago, was closer to T Rex, the band, than to Stegosaurus, 150m years ago.

7. The Rolling Stones’ first single, “Come On”, 1963, was closer to Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal government, 1905-08, than to the present day.

8. The 1975 EEC referendum was closer to the end of the First World War than the 2016 EU referendum was to the end of the Second World War.

9. When the first Star Wars film came out in 1977, the French were still using the guillotine: the last execution was that year.

10. The Berlin Wall has been down for longer than it was up, 28 years from 1961 to 1989.

Alternative Titles of Novels

1. The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. Or Brideshead Revisited.

2. The Mutiny of the Hispaniola. Or Treasure Island.

3. The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Or On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

4. A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented. Or Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

5. A Study of Provincial Life. Or Middlemarch.

6. There and Back Again. Or The Hobbit.

7. The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Or Peter Pan.

8. The Modern Prometheus. Or Frankenstein.

9. A Tale of the Seaboard. Or Nostromo.

10. The Parish Boy’s Progress. Or Oliver Twist.

Words Defined by their Anagrams

1. Angered = enraged.

2. Apple Macintosh = laptop machines.

3. Astronomer = moon starer.

4. Brush = shrub.

5. Customers = store scum.

6. Dictionary = indicatory.

7. Dormitory = dirty room.

8. Editor = redo it.

9. Eleven plus two = twelve plus one.

10. Schoolmaster = the classroom.

Real People Whose Names are Palindromes

1. Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project.

2. Leon Noel, France’s ambassador to Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War.

3. Revilo Oliver, professor at the University of Illinois who testified before the Warren Commission on JFK’s assassination.

4. Lon Nol, prime minister and then president of Cambodia.

5. Anuta Catuna, Romanian athlete who won the New York marathon in 1996.

6. Nisio Isin, Japanese novelist and manga writer, although it is a pseudonym.

7. Mike Kim, US-Korean author of Escaping North Korea.

8. Ordelafo Faledro, Doge of Venice, 1102–17.

9. Nell Allen, artist.

10. Anna Sanna, Democratic Left Italian mayor and MP in 1980s and 1990s.

Geographic Anomalies

1. Bristol is further east than Edinburgh.

2. Maine is the closest US state to Africa.

3. The Atlantic end of the Panama Canal is further west than the Pacific end.

4. Reno, Nevada, is west of Los Angeles.

5. North Parade in Oxford is to the south of South Parade.

6. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta has UN observer status and diplomatic ties with 107 states – yet no territory, in Malta or anywhere else.

7. Swansea and Cardiff play in the English Football League. Conversely, Shrewsbury has won the Welsh Cup six times.

8. Little Diomede Island is two miles from Big Diomede Island but 21 hours away, divided by the international date line in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia.

9. Surrey County Council HQ is not in Surrey but in Kingston upon Thames, Greater London.

10. France has a border with the Netherlands – on the island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten in the Caribbean.

Temporary Things that Became Permanent

1. Income tax, 1799.

2. Eiffel Tower, 1889. Intended to stand for 20 years.

3. Parliament Act 1911. The law that took away the power of the House of Lords to block legislation.

4. Pub opening hours, introduced by the Defence of the Realm Act 1914. Brought in for duration of the war but lasted until 2005.

5. Temporary Provisions against the Communist Rebellion, 1948 to 1991. Imposed martial law in Taiwan.

6. West German constitution, 1949, stipulated it would dissolve once Germany reunified. In fact when the Wall fell, Germany chose to unify via Article 23, which allowed new regions to join the Federal Republic.

7. Speed limit of 70mph, 1965. Originally for four months.

8. The British Army. Since the Bill of Rights, 1689, an Armed Forces Act has been required every five years.

9. London Eye, 2000. Had planning permission for five years.

10. Gareth Southgate. Temporary manager of England football team, 2016.

Foreign Words for Animals

1. Seven-faced bird: turkey in Japanese and Korean.

2. Little sea pig: guinea pig in German. (Guinea pigs hate water.)

3. Little chicken of the summer: butterfly in Welsh.

4. Naked snail: slug in German.

5. Pointed mouse: shrew in Danish.

6. Flutter mouse: bat in German.

7. Creature that really knows about honey: bear in Russian.

8. The cow of our teacher, Moses: ladybird in Hebrew. Via Yiddish from languages that call a ladybird “God’s little cow”, including Irish, Spanish, Polish and Russian.

9. Cat head eagle: owl in Chinese.

10. Flower kisser: hummingbird in Portuguese.

Album Title Puns

1. Aladdin Sane, David Bowie, 1973.

2. Ruth is Stranger than Richard, Robert Wyatt, 1975.

3. Moroccan Roll, Brand X, 1977.

4. Singles Going Steady, Buzzcocks, 1979.

5. Sound Affects, The Jam, 1980.

6. Blizzard of Ozz, Ozzy Osbourne, 1980.

7. Beauty and the Beat, The Go-Go’s, 1981.

8. From Her to Eternity, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 1984.

9. Road to Rouen, Supergrass, 2005.

10. Big Inner, Matthew E White, 2012.

Birth Names of Famous People

1. William Jefferson Blythe III. Bill Clinton.

2. Calvin Broadus Jr. Snoop Dogg.

3. Cassius Clay. Muhammad Ali.

4. Mary Anne Evans. George Eliot.

5. Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. Mother Teresa.

6. Michael Hecht. Michael Howard, former home secretary and Conservative Party leader.

7. Marion Morrison. John Wayne.

8. Edson Arantes do Nascimento. Pelé.

9. Piers Stefan O’Meara, who took his stepfather’s name as Piers Pughe-Morgan, later dropping the first barrel as the tabloid journalist Piers Morgan.

10. James Osterberg Jr. Iggy Pop.

The Top 10 Top 10s of 2017 are here.

Next week: British and American words and phrases that have overlapping, but dangerously different, meanings in the two languages, such as “Asian”, “middle class” or “salad”

Coming soon: Promises to leave the country if a vote goes the wrong way

Your suggestions please, and ideas for future Top 10s, to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk