What's in a name?

When travelling around London, it's hard to miss the unusual place names that seem to pop up everywhere. Sometimes I'm so used to switching buses at places called Elephant and Castle, or popping out to pick up a few things in Spitalfields.

Now Visit London have started an initative to get tourists and locals off the beaten track, to go out and explore London's hidden treasures, maybe even to learn something along the way.

Street Stories is the name of the event at Buckingham Palace where visitors participate in a game of "paille maille" - a 17th Century precursor to croquet that is believed to have given its name to the stately London avenue now know as Pall Mall.

There's plenty to learn about how the English Language has changed and shaped the common place names that we now take for granted. Turns out, it wasn't all down to Shakespeare.