Just before we hit the tarmac at Edinburgh airport, we flew over this water body. You can see the disparate colors of the water – somewhat clean to totally muddy. If you see carefully (my picture does not do it any justice), you can see a bridge over the water. Actually, there are two bridges.

I learnt later from my driver friend James (more on him later) that the white one is a new bridge.

“So, is that the North Sea?”

“Well, it leads into the North Sea.”

“So, what is it called?”

My friend responded to my question. But I could not understand a word of what he said. I asked him to repeat it but that did not help either. I noticed that here people do not pronounce the “t”. We do the same in the USA with words like “dentist” and “Atlanta” but only when there is a “n” preceding the “t”. Here it is “beyer” (not “better), “splee up” (not “split up”). This part of the world spends half their time focusing on their “tea”s and the other half ignoring their “t”s.

In any case, James ultimately spelt it out for me – “Firth of Forth”.

That is a funny name. Almost sounded like somebody with a very bad dental plan was put in charge of naming waterbodies in Scotland.

Till you realize that Firth means an estuary. (derived from Gaellic?)

But why name the river Forth?

Ah, well! Firth of Forth it is!!