25 Lake District Fells ranked by how hardcore their names sound

25 Place Fell

Truly the most nothingburger name you could give a mountain. Like, damn there sure is a Fell in that Place. What am I supposed to think about here?

24 Holme Fell

This fell is the antithesis of hardcore in name and in nature alike. Holme Fell. Home Fell. I think of gentle slopes, flowers and ripe bilberries. It is higher than Place Fell because it is a beautifully evocative name, just of the wrong things for this list’s purposes.

23 Barf

Who came up with this one.

22 Great Dodd

All the “Dodds” could go here, but I’ve gone with Great Dodd because the “great” descriptor only amplifies how small and unimposing the word “Dodd” is. It’s like the word sausage. Just kind of hard to take seriously.

21 Catbells

In terms of actual name quality this is a massive leap upwards. So evocative, so unusual (yes, so is “Barf” but for all the wrong reasons). However, this list is ranked by how hardcore the names are, and what this name evokes is a little cat with a bell on its collar tinkling as you dangle a piece of string to for it to play with. Then again, cats do have claws!

20 Harrison Stickle

This is just a guy’s name. It’s also very close to “stickler” and being a stickler is about as far from hardcore as you can get. But mostly, this just sounds like a guy you always see in the pub on a Friday night who gives you a wave from his table. If I sound unnecessarily harsh here: calling a mountain something that sounds like a guy from the pub is pretty cool, actually.

19 Fairfield

It’s such an obvious sounding name for a place that it feels like it shouldn’t just be what the horseshoe-shaped mountain in the Lake District is called. Fairfield should be someone from a Dickens novel. Probably someone very fair-minded and maybe associated with agriculture. It’s not a very threatening name, but there is majesty to it.

18 High Street
This name isn’t very hardcore but it is cool in a bizarre way because a high street is just about the last thing you expect a mountain to be named after. And the fact that it literally has an ancient high street running along the top is even better. It turns out that this is in fact the highest street by elevation in the country! The highest Roman road, anyway. Unfortunately, in practical terms this means the fell can’t even be imagined as especially dramatic, being flat enough to support a Roman road, but the whole thing gets points for originality.

17 Saint Sunday Crag

This is the only fell named after a “saint”, so it’s another one getting points for sheer out-there-ness. (And alliteration, of course.) The impression might be a little twee, like this fell is dressed up in its Sunday best with a pamphlet asking if you’ve considered accepting Jesus as your lord and saviour recently, but it also confers a sense of historical legitimacy and importance to the mountain. Did some sort of martyring happen here? The answer is no, and no one knows why this mountain out of all of them is named after a saint, but you can’t deny the intrigue factor, even if it is unearned.

16 Haystacks

There’s something offbeat about the name just being a thing the mountain kind of looks like, and haystacks being such a common sight across the fields of the Lake District makes the image feel more alive and in-keeping with the natural and human surroundings. If a pile of hay doesn’t sound especially hardocre, remember that Britain’s most famous wrestling heel was called Giant Haystacks, so it’s not to be underestimated as imagery for evoking size and strength.

15 Pavey Ark

Pavey Ark is only a moderately hardcore name among Lake District fells. It has mystique, and the “Ark” sounds lofty and exciting, but the overall cadence is more quaint than ominous, like an affectionate nickname. If you added a “The”, this could be the name of a delightful country pub with very nice ale. I’ve included it here because of all the fells on this list, Pavey Ark is the one with the greatest gulf between how innocuous the name sounds and how hardcore the actual place is. First, there’s the fact that the façade of Pavey Ark is cast in perpetual shadow, an effect that’s especially strong when you see it as part of the Langdale family photo: next to lanky older sibling Harrison Stickle, there’s emo younger sibling Pavey Ark, hunched over all dressed in black. And then there’s the existence of Jack’s Rake, which would easily take the number one spot on this list if it were a fell in its own right rather than a treacherous scramble straight up the jagged side of this mountain.

14 Wetherlam

This might be the hardest to pin down in terms of what exactly the name evokes. Wet weather, certainly, and appropriately so as anyone who’s walked through its boggy foothills knows. But wetness isn’t the most hardcore or the most original concept in a place like the Lake District. For me, there’s just something a little bit eerie about this name. It sounds like somewhere shrouded in clouds and fog, its origins lost to time.

13 Great Gable

Simple and beautiful visual analogy for a mountain, sounds like something manmade towering above you. But there’s a coziness associated with gables and the dinky houses you might see them on that is hard to get away from when trying to convey great sublime majesty. The alliteration plus assonance is very nice, however. And unlike in “Great Dodd”, the “Great” does a lot of work making the place sound epic and grand here.

12 Bowfell

It’s hard to explain why this one works. It doesn’t really describe anything about the shape, and on its own “bow” is hardly a menacing word (I already put “catbells” at the bottom for that reason). But the name has a heft to it that makes me think I need to take this one seriously. Maybe it’s because it evokes so little. It’s not quirky in a way that stands out like Haystacks or Pavey Ark. It doesn’t sound especially dangerous, but it’s not comforting either like Holme Fell (though I did actually get them mixed up as a child). It’s short, somber and a bit inscrutable.

11 Crinkle Crags

Just a cool, iconic name for a fell. I’m a big fan of names that are inspired by shape and appearance and Crinkle Crags might be the best example of that, plus some more very satisfying alliteration. Saying it all together produces the crunchy consonant clusters you’re looking for when you want to evoke somewhere jagged with perilous edges. It is also just a bit on the cute side to be truly threatening or hardcore, however.

10 Great End

It’s basically a final boss mountain name, and thankfully earns that by being one of the tallest in England. It’s simple, bold and thus very effective. But as we get to the real heavy hitters on this list, there are names that are so evocative and mysterious that the unsubtle nature of this one causes it to fall behind just a little. Still a very fine name for a fell, and a good one (aesthetically) to be found dead on. Here it is: Your Great End.

9 Dollywaggon Pike

The Pikes are where things start getting really heavy. “Pike” sounds much more threatening than “fell” as a word for mountain, even more than “peak”. (It’s also the name of a very alarming freshwater fish.) None of this is to undersell Dollywaggon which is a swaggering absolute unit of a name, even if it is my lowest ranked Pike on this list. Instantly memorable and five whole syllables, meaning it spends longer on the tongue to inspire more intrigue and grandeur. Only problem is that for all of this, the actual image evoked by “Dollywaggon” is... A wagon of dollies. Not even dolls, which you could at least speculate are haunted. Oh dear.

8 The Old Man of Coniston

It gets called “Coniston Old Man” on maps but that’s not what anyone calls it in conversation. Usually it’s just the Old Man, which means it’s a moniker rather than a conventional name and that automatically shoots it straight up the rankings. All these mountains have a certain amount of personality, but the Old Man is a fully blown character. Admittedly, that character could be a friendly one, and there is a grandfatherly quality to this fell. But the Old Man is also a figure of authority, a weary but formidable patriarch. No one knows how old he is, only that he’s been here longer than anyone else and has seen some shit. Don’t mess with the Old Man, especially if he’s got his hat on.

7 Pike O’ Blisco

Wainright himself said it best: “The man has no blood in his veins who does not respond eagerly to its fine-sounding, swashbuckling name.” This name has panache for days. Just try exclaiming it and letting that “Bliscoooo” ring out. “Swashbuckling” is the perfect word, because it sounds like a place you go if you’re looking for adventure, and where you just might get more than you bargained for. It also has a distinctive conical silhouette to back up this promise of excitement when you see it in the flesh.

6 Hard Knott

Where most of the top picks on this list inspire some sense of vastness in their names, Hard Knott takes a different approach. It sounds small, but twisted and cruel, fiendish to navigate: a “hard knot” to unravel, in other words. More so than the rather unassuming fell itself, these associations may apply better to the nearby road named after it, Hardknott Pass, the bane of mountain-bikers and motorists unused to the undulating roads of the Lakes. There’s also a Roman fort here with the same name, and can’t you just imagine some bloody medieval battle taking place here among the windy crags, getting called “The Battle at Hard Knott”?

5 Scafell Pike

For years I thought this was spelled “Scar Fell Pike.” That alone should tell you what an effective and hardcore name it is. What could be more hardcore than a scar? Of course, it also sounds like “ska” which is decidedly less hardcore, but when you’re already picturing the great rocky remains of glacial erosion, “scar” is probably closer to the surface of your mind. Scafell Pike is chosen here over Sca Fell not only because it is the highest peak in England (how frustrating for Sca Fell that it’s number two! That’s worse than if it was a middle-of-the-road 2500 feet-er, in my opinion), but because, again, that plosive “Pike” is essential for completing the image. The litmus test is which one sounds better when whispered in the character of an old hag telling the hero of a quest where the fearsome dragon resides. He lives up high, in his fortress on Sca... Fell... PIKE! See what I mean?

4 Pillar

This one’s just ominous. It always struck a bit of fear in me as a child, actually. Even though I knew Scafell Pike was the biggest and most intimidating mountain, and Pillar doesn’t even crack 3000 feet, it sounded immense and looming and probably vertiginously vertical in shape. It’s also a biblical image. You think of Lot’s wife transformed into a pillar of salt, or a pillar of fire in the desert. The revelation that this name doesn’t refer to anything about the mountain’s shape but the rocky outcrop on its side is a bit of a letdown, but that just means the name is a lot to live up to in the first place.

3 Skiddaw

This sounds like the name of a death metal group. It sounds like a war cry. It does not at all sound like the name of a mountain, and learning that it is one makes it more frightening: is this the sort of mountain where you might just... Skiddaw, as it were, lose your footing and tumble thousands of feet to a messy death on the rocks? The hardcore factor is maybe slightly undercut by the slightly cartoony banana-peel-related motions the word “skid” suggests, but if anything, that adds an off-kilter giddiness that only makes it sound wilder and more dangerous.

2 Blencathra

Thank Alfred Wainright for bringing this name back into fashion, as without him we’d be calling this fell the far less cool “Saddleback”. Blencathra is one of the few Lake District fell names that is thought to be Cumbric rather than Norse or English in origin, and this might be the key to its near-unbeatable aura despite being very obscure in meaning. The mouthfeel might be the most satisfying, look at all those consonant clusters: bl, nc, thr. Like Pike O’ Blisco, this is one to be spoken as a guttural cry, possibly with a thunderclap in the background for emphasis. I’d use it to name a warlock character in DnD.

1 Helvellyn

It doesn’t matter that the name has nothing to do with “hell” or a “hell valley”, those are the immediate connotations you’ll make, and you don’t need to know a single thing about the Lake District or mountains in general for the sentence “I climbed Helvellyn yesterday” to sound metal as fuck. It’s the other Cumbric fell name on this list as well, so make of that what you will. The simple internal rhyme that makes the name roll off the tongue so smoothly, almost softly, kind of adds to the menace. It doesn’t growl in the throat like a Skiddaw or Blencathra, and it doesn’t have an ominous denotative meaning like Pillar, but you cannot beat this for stone cold aura. And even better, it has lore to back that aura up. You have to traverse somewhere called “Striding Edge” to get to the summit? That’s what Striding Edge looks like? Famous deaths?! One last litmus test, try applying it to all the fells in the top six or so of this list. Our venturing hero reaches an observation point, where they get the first real glimpse of the dreaded cursed mountain that is their quest’s final boss. “There it is,” they whisper in awe to their travelling companion. “Helvellyn.”