"Torpenhow Hill, a place in England, is famously a quadruple tautology: "Tor," "pen," and "how," all mean "hill" in different languages, so "Torpenhow Hill" essentially translates to "Hill-hill-hill Hill." Each new group of settlers felt compelled to rename the place in their own tongue, and each of them drew inspiration from it looking like a hump. Cultures that passed through the region added their own word for "hill": tor from Old English, pen from the Celtic, how from Norse, and finally hill from modern English."
"On its face, this whole thing is silly. But each extra "hill" made perfect sense to the people who added it. It didn't at all sound redundant to them because they didn't understand the previous words anyway. They kept the "heritage" and merely added another word that described the world in their own terms. This is the Not-Invented-Here syndrome at large."
Torpenhow Hill illustrates how successive cultures appended their own word for "hill," creating a quadruple tautology that made sense to each group unaware of earlier names. Each group preserved heritage while adding a familiar descriptor in its own tongue. Organizations often mirror this behavior by rebuilding or renaming existing solutions instead of understanding prior work, resulting in wasted time and resources. Individuals frequently tie work to identity, which can make outside ideas feel threatening and inhibit adoption. A culture that rewards curiosity and welcomes ideas from anywhere reduces Not-Invented-Here tendencies and enables more effective progress.
Read at Psychology Today
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