Dame Cateline de la Mor la souriete

The subject of English place­names is a complicated one. There are many factors involved, not the least of which is the waves of conquest England suffered during the period in which most of her place­names were formed. The result is that English place­names come from a variety of languages: possibly pre­British, British, Latin, Old English, Old Norse of two varieties and Norman French. Each of these languages has contributed place­names and influenced the form of existing place­names. This makes a rich and complicated subject with much fine detail. I have tried to review the major types of English place­names, but it has not been possible to touch on every aspect of the subject.

A basic fact of English place­name research is that looks can be deceiving. The modern form of a name may clearly indicate its meaning, such as Ashwood (Staffordshire) which means ash wood (Ekwall p. 16). More often, the modern form of a name is deceptive, such as Rockbeare (Devon) which has nothing to do with rocks or bears, but means "grove frequented by rooks" (Mills, p. 274). Yet another problem is that place­names which have the same modern form may have completely different meanings and origins. For example the place­name Oulton may mean "old farmstead," "Outhulf's farmstead," "Wulfa's farmstead" or "Ali's farmstead" (Cameron, p. 18). Only the early forms of the particular place will show the original meaning. Another problem with looking at modern forms is that some words that were distinct in Old English appear identical in modern English. The Old English ham which means variously "homestead, village, manor, estate" (Mills, p. 381) and hamm which means "enclosure, land hemmed by water or marsh or higher ground, land in a river­bend, river­meadow, promontory" (Mills, p. 381) both appear as ­ham in modern names. Obviously, whether a name element was originally ham or hamm would make a major difference in meaning. At the same time the river names Axe, Exe, Esk and Usk are all derived from the British word isca meaning "water" (Reaney p. 77). Any element in use over centuries is likely to change meaning or have local shades of meaning that at a distance of ten centuries or more we may have difficulty ascertaining.

To combat this sort of confusion, scholars of English place­names collect as many early forms of a name as possible and analyze them in the light of their knowledge of language and dialect, grammar, pronunciation, topography, sound shifts and other relevant factors. Although the generally available dictionaries on the subject may cite anywhere from one to a dozen dated forms for each entry, place­name scholars may actually assemble a few dozen to a few thousand examples of early spellings of a name before coming to any conclusions.

Considered structurally, there are two types of English place­names ­­ simplex names from a single element and compounds composed of two, or occasionally three elements. Simplex names were usually local names applied to a single prominent feature of the landscape, typically a hill, valley or remains of a prehistoric or Roman fort. Other simplex names exist because they were an outlying farm or dependency of a nearby village or farmstead. In this case, the local people had no need to identify the place more clearly. Compound names are composed of an adjectival element and a habitative or topographic element. These compound names make up the majority of place­names in England.

Considered functionally there are three types of English place­names. The first type is folk names, which is the name of a folk or people which became the name of their settlement. Essex means "(territory of) the East Saxons" (Mills, p. 124). These names are generally quite old. The second type of place­name is a habitative name, which may be simplex or compound. Wick (Avon) is an example of a simplex habitative name meaning "the dwelling, the specialized farm or trading settlement" (Mills, p. 358). A compound habitative name is Crosby (Cumbria) "village where there are crosses" (Mills, p. 97). Habitative names contain some element which indicates human settlement. Topographical names may also be simplex, such as Wawne (Humberside) "quaking bog or quagmire" (Mills, p. 349) or compound, such as Ottershaw (Surrey), which means "small wood frequented by otters" (Mills, p. 250). They describe some feature of the landscape. Often topographic names later came to be applied to a nearby settlement.

The earliest place­names in England are a small number that may be pre­Celtic in origin, including the river names Colne, Humber, Itchen, Ouse and Wey. These are believed to have been in use before the Celtic inhabitants arrived in the fourth century B.C.E. and some may date back to the Neolithic era (Mills, p. xvii). They survived because of their adoption by the Britons and subsequently by the Anglo­Saxons.

Next in antiquity are the British names, used by the Britons. These are unevenly distributed across England being quite rare in the east and growing more frequent in the west, until one approaches Cornwall and the area near Wales where the Britons were able to maintain a hold on the land the longest. In the east only the names of large rivers such as the Thames and the Yare and important Roman towns such as London, York and Lincoln survived. Further west, some smaller rivers, hills, forests and settlements also retain names of Celtic origin.

Many surviving British names are topographical names, adopted by the Anglo­Saxons as such and later transferred to nearby settlements. British names of rivers, hills, forests and valleys have survived. Two British words for hill, bre and pen survive in a variety of place­names, usually with an Old English addition meaning "hill." Bre is the first element in Brill (Buckinghamshire) with the addition of hyll (Mills, p. 52), and in Bredon (Herefordshire and Worcestershire) and Breedon on the Hill (Leicestershire) with the addition of dun, also meaning hill (Mills p. 49) and also in Brewood (Staffordshire) combined with wudu (Mills, p. 52). Pendle Hill (Lancashire) is composed of pen with the addition of the Old English hyll, which developed into Pendle and Hill was once again added (Ekwall, p. 361). British ced meaning wood appears in Chute Forest in Wiltshire (Ekwall, p. 108), Chetwode in Buckinghamshire (Mills, p. 76) and in the wholly British compound Lytchett (Dorset), meaning "grey wood" (Mills, p. 219). The British kumb, meaning valley was used so extensively that it was adopted into Old English as cumb and has yielded numerous place­names containing Combe and Coombe (Mills, p. 88).

A great influence on the remaining British place­names is Latin. An interesting class of surviving British names come from Latin words that were adopted into British. Foremost among these are egles from the Latin ecclesia, wic from vicus, camp from campus, and funta from fontana. Egles survives today in towns known as Eccles in Lancashire, Norfolk, Greater Manchester and Kent. It appears in compounds with an Old English element in Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Herefordshire and Merseyside. Egles is believed to indicate the presence of an early church (Mills, p. 381).

Some Romano­British place­names survived as the first element in a compound with the Old English element ceaster, which actually comes from the Latin castra. Examples are Manchester (Lancashire) from the British Mamucion (Reaney p. 79), Wroxeter (Lancashire) from Viroconion (Reaney, p. 79) and Winchester (Hampshire) from Venta Belgarum (Reaney p. 80). Other British names have survived in ancient records but have been replaced by names derived from Old English. These include the rivers the Hyle and the Limen (Reaney p. 77) and the British name of Canterbury, which was Durovernon (Reaney, p. 80).

Some Celtic names contain what are called "inversion compounds," in which the adjectival element occurs as a second element rather than as the first. This is characteristic of Celtic names formed in medieval times. They occur frequently in Cornwall and occasionally in other places where a Celtic influence survived late. Lanreath (Cornwall) is a name of this type, meaning "church­site of Reydhogh" (Mills, p. 204). Another example is Pensax (Herefordshire and Worcestershire) meaning "hill of the Anglo­Saxons" (Mills, p. 256).

The vast majority of English place­names are Old English in origin. The arrival of the Anglo­Saxons caused a major disruption in English place­name nomenclature. Names of Old English origin come from all three major types of place­name. Folk names were used in the early stages of Anglo­Saxon settlement. Habitative names and topographic names were formed throughout the Anglo­Saxon period.

Folk names are a small but significant type of place­name. Many are names of important divisions of England today. These became place­names because they were transferred from the people to whom they referred to the territory of that people. A folk name containing an element such as saete meaning "settlers" or folc meaning "folk," is usually a division of a larger established group. Suffolk is "the south folk" (of the Angles) (Reaney, p. 99). Dorset means "settlers at the Dorn" in which Dorn is a reduced form of the Old English name of Dorchester (Mills, p. 108). Cornwall is an Anglicized form of a Celtic tribal name with the addition of the Old English element walh meaning "Briton, Welshman" (Reaney, p. 93). Wessex is "the west Saxons" (Mills, p. 352) and Northumberland "the people north of the Humber River" (Reaney, p. 100). Some names of less prominent folk also exist in place­names. Only a detailed knowledge of early Anglo­Saxon tribal names would indicate that

A distinct type of folk name is represented by Hastings and Reading. The Old English ending ­ingas means "the descendants, followers or people of" (Cameron, p. 64). These two names mean "the people of Haesta" and "the people of Reada." In the case of Hastings, one sees the survival of the plural form, while Reading shows the more normal pattern in which the plural is lost. Traditionally, scholars believed that names formed with ­ingas represented the oldest English settlements, but more recent evidence has cast doubt on this theory (Gelling, p. 106­109). Some compounds of ­ingas were formed with a topographical term instead of a personal name. In this case, the people took their name from a feature of the landscape around their settlement and this name then became the name of the settlement. Avening (Gloucestershire) derives its name from "people living by the river Avon" (Mills p. 18) and Epping (Essex) from "the upland people" (Reaney p. 107).

Most habitative names occur in compound forms, but certain elements can occur as simplex names as well. Burh "fortified place, stronghold" (Mills, p. 380) and ceaster "Roman station or walled town, old fortification or earthwork" (Mills, p. 380) are often indicators of Roman or prehistoric fortifications. As such they tended to be rare in a given locality and needed no adjectival element to separate them from others like them. Burh gave rise to names such as Burg in Suffolk (Mills, p. 58) and Bury in Cambridgeshire (Mills, p. 61). Chester in Cheshire (Mills, p. 75) and Castor in Cambridgeshire (Mills, p. 68) are derived from ceaster.

Other simplex names occur in that form because they were originally dependencies or outlying settlements of an established settlement. As such, they were originally clearly defined to the local inhabitants. Bere­tun and bere­wic are compounds that mean essentially barley farm or outlying part of an estate (Mills, p. 379). They have given rise to numerous Bartons (Mills, p. 25) and Berwicks (Mills, p. 33). Stoc, meaning "place, outlying farmstead or hamlet, secondary or dependent settlement" (Mills, p. 384), has given Stoke as a common place­name (Cameron, p. 28).

Compound English habitative names typically end with an element indicating a human settlement. The two most common Old English elements of this type are tun "enclosure, farmstead, village, manor, estate" (Mills, p. 384) and ham "homestead, village, manor, estate" (Mills, p. 381). Ham is believed to be the older form, but it was not used consistently throughout England and it is easily confused with hamm (Gelling, p. 112). Ham is rarely combined with topographical elements, particularly clif, ea, eg, halh, hyll, mersc, mor and ofer (Ekwall, p. xvi). Tun is the most common habitative element in Old English. It originally meant enclosure, farmstead. Later it came to mean village and hamlet as well, and in names formed after the Norman conquest, it could mean manor or estate (Cameron, p. 141). Which meaning is correct for a particular place­name depends on its age. This can be determined from written records if the place­name is mentioned, but most place­names do not occur in written records as soon as they are named. This same sort of uncertainty of meaning applies to any English place­name element in use over a long period of time.

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