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Is it true that the Russian word for "railway station" comes from the English "Vauxhall"?

Question #140787. Asked by chabenao1.
Last updated Jun 27 2015.
Originally posted Jun 26 2015 8:26 PM.

sjd12345
Answer has 1 vote
sjd12345

Answer has 1 vote.
There are competing theories on this.One is that a team of Russians visited Vauxhall in England to inspect the construction of the London and South Western Railway in 1848. It is thought that they mistook the name of the station for the generic name of the building type. Another explanation the first Russian railway, constructed in 1837, ran from Saint Petersburg via Tsarskoye Selo to Pavlovsk Palace, where extensive Pleasure Gardens had earlier been established. In 1838 a music and entertainment pavilion was constructed at the railway terminus. This pavilion was called the Vokzal in homage to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in London. Soon, the station itself was called that. Later on it came to mean any substantial railway station building.
The word "voksal" (??????) had been known in the Russian language with the meaning of "amusement park" long before the 1840s and may be found, e.g., in the poetry of Aleksandr Pushkin: (source Wikipedia)

Jun 27 2015, 12:42 AM
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