By Tom Moriarty

Discover how to decode the names of Britain’s places

after Tom Moriarty
(https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/origins-of-english-place-
names/)

Have you ever driven through a town and curiously pondered what's really
in a name? Or have you sniggered at the seemingly peculiar phonetics of a sign
post welcoming you to a new village? Well, it turns out there's a story behind
every name, and we'll help you figure out what it is.
Look on any map for the names of a town, city, village or hamlet in Britain and
you’ll hear mysterious echoes of the country’s polyglot past.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy of England)
The toponymy of England derives from a variety of linguistic origins. Many
English toponyms have been corrupted and broken down over the years, due to
language changes which have caused the original meanings to be lost. In some cases,
words used in these place names are derived from languages that are extinct, and of
which there are no known definitions. Place names may also be compounds composed
of elements derived from two or more languages from different periods. The majority of
the toponyms predate the radical changes in the English language triggered by
the Norman Conquest, and some Celtic names even predate the arrival of the Anglo-
Saxons in the first millennium AD.
The place names of England, as in most other regions, typically have meanings
which were significant to the settlers of a locality (though these were not necessarily the
first settlers). They hint at forgotten Celtic and Saxon settlers, Scandinavian invaders,
powerful Norman landowners and long-lost geographical features. Sometimes these
meanings have remained clear to speakers of modern English (for
instance Newcastle and Sevenoaks); more often, however, elucidating them requires
the study of older languages. In languages as diverse as Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon,
and French place names reference (include as an element) such words as hills and
rivers, fortress and forest clearings.
As the names lost their original meanings either due to the introduction of a new
language or linguistic drift, they gradually changed, or were appended with newer
elements. An example is Breedon on the Hill in Leicestershire, whose name seems to
have grown by the accretion of elements stressing the hill in the language currently
spoken.
Armed with just a little etymological expertise, you can easily decode common
parts of place names. You’ll begin to notice some simple suffixes like ‘ton’ (meaning
farm or hamlet), ‘ly’ or ‘ley’(meaning wood or a clearing), ‘stow’ (place or meeting place),
and ‘bury’ (meaning fort). These might be appended to the names of local landmarks
like rivers, making the meaning fairly obvious, as with the village of Isham in
Northamptonshire. The rive Ise is nearby, so Isham simply means ‘the village by the
river Ise’.
 Now let’s take a closer look.
Celts
The Celtic groups who lived in Britain before the Roman conquest, didn’t leave
much of a linguistic mark on England outside of Cornwall, but a few of their names do
survive elsewhere. Two-thirds of England’s rivers take their names from Celtic –
especially in the north and west: Avon, Derwent, Severn, Tees, Trent, Tyne – and
Itchen, which later lent its name to the town Bishop’s Itchington. (Some of these names
may even have come from the people who were here before the Celts). Often the
names just meant ‘river’ or ‘water’, and sometimes no one knows what they originally
meant; in the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, AD Mills calls Severn “an
ancient pre-English river name of doubtful etymology”. The River Tame, which we cross
on our trip to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, comes from the Celtic for ‘dark one’ or ‘river’ – as
does the River Thames, not least numerous Avons around the country , because the
word avon literally means ‘river’. It’s similar to the Welsh ‘afon’, and that’s not surprising
because Welsh evolved from the old Celtic languages.
The names of some towns can also be traced back to Celtic. ‘Pen’ in a place
name, like Penge, Pendelton or Penrith, usually comes from the Celtic for hill or
headland. ‘Coombre’ or ‘combe’ come from the word ‘cym’ meaning ‘valley’, noe
coomon in the south west in the names like Castle Combe, Crowcomber, Salcombeetc.
There is less Celtic influence in the south and east largely thanks to the Anglo-
Saxons. When they invaded in the 6th Century AD, they pushed the Britons to the
edges and into the hills. Those who stayed in England were gradually assimilated,
rather like the name of the town Much Wenlock. It gets its ‘Much’ from Anglo-
Saxon mycel, meaning ‘great’ or ‘much’. Wenlock comes from Celtic wininicas, ‘white
area’, and the Anglo-Saxon loca, ‘place’.

Commonly-occurring suffixes of Old English origin[14]

Origin

Suffix Examples
Old English
Meaning
Word

homestead /
-ham hām Dagenham, Horsham, Swaffham
village

-ing -ingas people of Reading, Worthing, Hastings

 fenced
-ton tun Brighton, Bolton, Preston
enclosure

-bury / -
burh town Banbury, Shrewsbury, Middlesbrough
brough

-ford ford ford Oxford, Chelmsford, Bradford

-ley lēah clearing Burnley, Keighley, Barnsley

Borrowdale, Calderdale, many others in the Yorkshire

-dale dæl valley
Dales and Derbyshire Dales

These suffixes may also be combined, as in the cases of Birmingham and Southampton.

Romans
The Romans (invaded Britain in 433 B.C.) founded many new settlements, and
usually gave them their own new names – although when renaming existing places
sometimes they combined Latin and Celtic. A Celtic name that had been rendered by
earlier Greek visitors as Pretanniké became the Roman Britannia. Lincoln comes from
the Celtic lindo for ‘pool’ and Latin colonia for ‘colony’. After the legions left in the early
5th century, Britons adopted the Latin word castrum to denote places with Roman
military links. Today that’s reflected in places with the suffixes ‘chester’, ‘cester, or
‘caster’ in their name – and there are plenty of these, like Leicester, Chester, Bicester,
Cirencester, Caister, Colchester, Gloucester, Manchester and Winchester.

Anglo-Saxons and Old English

Germanic tribes, who came to England from the 5 th century, left many of place
names for posterity. The Angles gave their name to East Anglia and ‘England’ itself, the
Sussex, Middlesex, and Wessex were named for South, Middle and West Saxons.
Places from around this time include a variety of terms. For instance, people’s
names are traced in the place names of the West Midlands: the city of Birmingham was
probably founded by a man called Beorma, while the city of Dudley by a man called
Dudda; Edith’s Weston in Rutland was once the western estate of the Saxon Queen
Edith.
Animal’s names were used to names places: Oxford means ‘ford for Oxen’,
Swinton means ‘pig village’, Gateshead means ‘goat’s promontory’, and Hertford – ‘ford
for harts (another word for ‘deer’)’.
 Unlike the Romans, Anglo-Saxons did not come to establish an outpost or colony.
They came to move in. The Anglo-Saxons did build forts – the word burh (‘fortified
place’) gives Britain all of its –burghs and –burys – but what they really wanted to do
was farm, build towns and conduct trade. If they encountered a forest (called a wald,
wold, weald, holt or shaw) or a grove (graf, now –grove and –grave), they might clear it
to make a leah (now –ly, –lay, –ley and –leigh). They would enclose land to make
a worthig (–worth), ham (the source of 'home'), or tun (now – ton and the source of
'town'). Since ham was more common in the earlier years and tun later on, there are
more –hams in the south, where the Anglo-Saxons first came, and more –tons in the
north and west.
River mouths – mutha meaning ‘mouth’ gives us Plymouth, Yarmouth and so on.
‘Ac’ means ‘oak’ in Acton and Acle,ad ‘aesc’ – ash tree traced in Ashton, Aston and
Ashford. Religious settlements included minster component designating ‘communities of
clergy’ like in Westminster, Axminster, Kidderminster and Leominster. Old English root
stow referring to a religious meeting site is found in the names of Padstow, Chepstow,
and Felixstowe.

Normans
Many Norman elements in place names indicate ownership. For instance, the la
Zuche family owned Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the Busards owned Leighton Buzzard. The
ownership of a place by bishops, priors, princess, kings and queens is reflected in
names like King’s Lynn, Queenborough, Princess Risborough, Bishop’s Stordford, and
Prior Norton. Ville meaning ‘settlement’ is found in Pentonville, Bourneville and Turville.

SELF-CHECK TESTS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Read the following questions and choose the correct answer among the given
options. Check the information above for the correct answers.

1. Which of the following languages did not contribute to the formation of the
place names in Britain?
a) Latin
b) Greek
c) Celtic
d) French
2. Which of old languages does the word ‘Britain’ originate from?
a) Gothic
b) Celtic
c) Latin
d) Anglo-Saxon
3. Which of the following words are not traced as toponyms’ historical
components?
a) sea
b) river
c) town
d) forest
4. Which of the following words convey the meaning of the Celtic morpheme
-bury constituting many of Britain’s historic toponyms?
a) river
b) forest
c) hill
d) fort
5. The etymology of the name of the River Thames goes to the word:
a) quick
b) long
c) water
d) dark
6. Which of the following elements traced in Britain’s toponyms is not of
Germanic origin?
a) -stow
b) -castre
c) -ley
d) -ton
7. Which of the following place names include the Anglo-Saxon historical
suffix meaning fort ?
a) Canterbury
b) Southampton
c) Avon
d) Durham
8. Which of the following English towns preserves the component ‘hill’ in its
meaning?
a) Pendleton
b) Preston
c) Plymouth
d) Birningham
9. Which is the correct pronunciation for the city of Birmingham?
a) /'bә:minәm/
b) /'bә:minhәm/
c) /'bә:minhæm/
d) /'bә:minæm/
10. Which of the following place names contain the Anglo-Saxon element
meaning ‘home’?
a) Nottingham
b) Preston
c) Manchester
d) Yorkshire
11. Which of the following place names means a ‘castle in the valley’?
a) Manchester
b) Castle Combe
c) Edinburg
d) Gloucester
12. The names of the regions like Sussex, Middlesex, and Wessex were given to
these places by:
a) the Celts
b) the Angles
c) the Saxons
d) the Romans

Get ready to speak on the following issues:

1. Give the general overview of historical sources of Britain’s place names
(speak what languages Britain’s toponyms come from, when these were formed
and where they are located).
2. Characterize the impact of the Celts on modern British toponymy, trace
Celtic elements in modern Britain’s toponymy, and explain their meaning.
3. Speak of the Anglo-Saxon and Old English components in Britian’s place
names, comment on their meaning and localization.
4. Mention the contribution of the Norman invaders to the English language,
mention their specific influence on formation of place names on Britain.
5. Find at least three place names among modern cities, towns or villages of
Great Britain (except for those given in the texts above), with contain the meaning
of the following elements:
- town (settlement)
- home
- fortified place (fort)
- castle