English Place-Names Explained

Charles Whynne-Hammond

Description

Blubberhouses, Stanstead Mountfitchet and Melbury Bubb ! English place-names can be curious and amusing. They can also tell us about our past. England's towns,villages farms, and even fields, have names whose beginnings stretch back over 2,000 years. In this well-researched book Charles Whynne-Hammond explains the meanings and derivations of these names. He also covers the names of cinemas, theatres, football clubs, and even shopping centres.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Reino Unido
• Family history
• United Kingdom
• History of Europe
• Genealogy
• Great Britain
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Countryside Books
• Date de parution: 29 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781846748448
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES EXPLAINED

Charles Whynne-Hammond

COUNTRYSIDE BOOKS
NEWBURY BERKSHIRE
First published 2005 © Charles Whynne-Hammond, 2005 Reprinted 2007
All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the prior permission of the publisher:
COUNTRYSIDE BOOKS 3 Catherine Road Newbury, Berkshire
To view our complete range of books, please visit us at www.countrysidebooks.co.uk
ISBN 978 1 85306 911 6
Photographs by the author
Cover design by Peter Davies, Nautilus Design
Produced through MRM Associates Ltd., Reading Typeset by Techniset Typesetters, Newton-le-Willows Printed by Cambridge University Press
All material for the manufacture of this book was sourced from sustainable forests.
Contents
P REFACE
S ECTION A – T HE H ERITAGE AND E VOLUTION OF P LACE -N AMES
1    T HE S TUDY OF P LACE -N AMES : R ESEARCH & U NDERSTANDING
Introduction
Undertaking Research
Sources
Linguistic Developments
Interpreting Source Material
(a) The Formation of Names
(b) Compound Names
(c) Misleading Names
(d) Misleading Spellings
2    T HE B LENDING OF L ANGUAGES : M IGRATION & C ONSOLIDATION
Introduction
The Mixing of Tongues
The Celtic Fringe
The Saxon Kingdoms
Danelaw
The Development of Shires
The Consolidation of Counties
County Sub-Divisions
3    C OMMUNICATION : T RACKS , W AYS & R OADS
Ancient Trackways
Roman Roads
Trading Routes
Non-Trading Routes
Turnpikes and Toll Roads
4    T HE N ATURAL W ORLD : L ANDSCAPE & N ATURE
Topographical Features
Directional Names
Climatic Names
Rivers and Estuaries
Coastal Areas
Forest Names
Tree and Plant Names
Animal Names
5    T HE N ATURE OF S OCIETY : C ULTURE & B ELIEF
Folk and Tribal Names
Personal Names
Group Names
Pagan Names
Christian Names
Death and Burial Names
Folklore and Legend Names
6    T HE N EEDS OF S OCIETY : C O-OPERATION & P ROTECTION
The Spread of Agriculture
Enclosure Names
Estate Names
Fortified Settlement Names
Colonisation Names
Bastide Towns
7    T HE W EALTH OF S OCIETY : I NDUSTRY & T RADE
Transport Names
Market Names
Mineral Names
Industrial Revolution Names
Resort Names
Urban Names
8    N AMES W ITHIN T OWNS AND V ILLAGES
Street Names
House Names
Pub Names
Theatre and Cinema Names
S ECTION B – C OUNTY G AZETTEER
C OMMON P LACE -N AME E LEMENTS
I NDEX
Preface

I wrote Tracing the History of Place-Names (published 1992) as an academic introduction to the study of geographical etymology: how and why the names we see about us evolved. Since my university days I have travelled and researched widely, this subject still holding a fascination. The landscapes around us, both natural and man-made, tell us their pasts – their evolving character, structural history and culture. And the understanding of the place-names within those landscapes strengthens our sense of place and deepens the ties with our national roots.
The book was well received. Now I have revised, expanded and restyled it under the title English Place-Names Explained , extra material being added and photographs introduced. It has been a worthwhile and interesting undertaking which I hope will bring this subject to a wider public.
I should like to thank my wife Glenys for her constant support and advice and my brothers Alec and Peter for their additional research. I should also like to thank Lynn Whyte, Trevor Jones and Marian and Ian Douglas for their extra information and photographic material. I must, in addition, thank Nicholas Battle and Paula Leigh (at Countryside Books) for their enthusiasm for this project.
Charles Whynne-Hammond
S ECTION

A
T HE H ERITAGE AND E VOLUTION OF P LACE -N AMES
C HAPTER 1
The Study Of Place-Names: Research & Understanding

I NTRODUCTION
E very name, like every word, has an origin. Whether it be a name of an object, a person or a place, it will have a derivation based upon a past development of sounds and meanings. It will have connections with other names, and correlations with other words from similar cultural or linguistic backgrounds. It will be the product of a distillation of the oral traditions and written customs experienced within historic landscapes and societies. The study of such name and word developments is called ‘etymology’.
Finding out more about the names all around us can be fun. Whether we enjoy walking or driving in the countryside, reading guidebooks or maps, looking around our villages and towns, going to a pub or football match, even just shopping, we can increase our enjoyment by understanding more about the names we see. Everywhere there are names, and everywhere there is a place-name story to be told.
Even the names of the clothes we wear can have origins in place-names. Our woollen jerseys are named after Jersey, balaclava helmets after Balaclava (where the Crimean war battle was fought and the famous Charge of the Light Brigade took place) and our riding jodhpurs after Jodhpur in India. The ‘jeans’ we wear derive their name from ‘Janne’ the old French name for the town of Genoa where the twilled cotton cloth used in their manufacture was originally made. Today jeans are made of ‘denim’, a word we get from ‘de Nimes’ – Nimes being a town in southern France. And talking of material, ‘nylon’, it is thought, is so-called because it was invented and developed simultaneously at two places, New York and London.

Westward Ho!, Devon
In place-names, too, life can imitate art. Westward Ho! is a book by Charles Kingsley (published 1855) and Jamaica Inn was written by Daphne du Maurier (published 1936).The north Devon town Westward Ho! was actually named after the novel, built as a tourist resort and commemorating the famous local author whose statue stands in nearby Bideford. The isolated pub on Bodmin Moor was called Jamaica Inn long before the novel, the name going back to the mid-18th century. It was not so called because of any link with smuggling, even though rum was indeed a popular contraband. It was, in fact, named in honour of the local landowners of the time, the Trelawney family. Two of its members, Edward and William, were Governors of Jamaica during the 18th century.

Jamaica Inn, Cornwall
Place-names also crop up in our everyday speech. Not just when giving directions or relating travels, of course, but indirectly in our phrases and daily conversation. Taking ‘coals to Newcastle’ is of little help when one remembers that Tyneside was a centre for solid fuel long before coal was mined, coastal sea-coal having been collected there since medieval times. And being ‘sent to Coventry’ was certainly no fun during the Civil War when Royalist prisoners-of-war were despatched to that very pro-Roundhead city in the Midlands. No wonder the saying has stuck.
Place-names can be curious like ‘High Easter’ and ‘Christmas Common’, or courteous like ‘Pleasley’ and ‘Thankerton’. They can be amusing like ‘Knotty Ash’ or murderous like ‘Bloodybush Edge’. They can be euphonic, ‘Iwerne Courtney’, or the opposite, ‘Ugly’. Some place-names even sound as though they might be human – ‘Edith Weston’, ‘Hartley Wintney’, ‘Barton Seagrave’. Such are surely a rich source of personal names for writers of fiction.
Who could not be distracted by the fascination of names? For the pure enjoyment of knowledge alone the study of place-names would be worthwhile. Names make up a large part of our vocabulary and are, everywhere, a large part of our lives. They are used to distinguish, locate and describe the places about us and therefore reflect our own human characteristics. They help to distinguish, locate and describe ourselves. A general interest in their origins is therefore both understandable and natural.
But the study of place-names can be more than just informative and pleasurable. It can be central to our very real need to learn about ourselves and our past, about the world as a whole and our rôle in the evolution of life.
Place-names have both a linguistic derivation and an interpretative one. They derive from past languages, ancient Greek, Latin, Saxon and so on, and from past meanings, telling us something of the topography, climate, society and philosophy of different places and periods in history. Hence, the study of place-names not only complements studies in other spheres of knowledge but can also actually enhance and explain those studies.
Briefly, place-names can be used within other subjects in the following ways:
ARCHAEOLOGY . Place-name evidence can give supplementary information about known antiquities and new information about possible new sites for archaeological excavation. For example, names containing the Saxon element ‘straet’ may indicate the existence of a Roman road and the names containing an element meaning ‘fort’ might suggest a Roman camp. Archaeologists often study place-names before carrying out a dig.
HISTORY . The study of the linguistic origins of place-names, and the mapping of linguistic elements within place-names, can indicate early population movements, cycles of invasion and settlement, tribal distributions and ethnic settlement patterns. Scandinavian place-names in Britain, for instance, show the progress of Viking invasion down Eastern England, in the North-west and across into Ireland.
GEOGRAPHY . Study of place-name meanings can tell us the character of landscapes at the time of initial habitation. Where a river flowed, or where a lake existed might be important information to a geographer, especially if a date can be given. Such knowledge could indicate speeds of erosion or deposition, the nature of weathering, the action of wind and rain, or the extent of landform construction. Similarly, place-name meanings might tell the geographer about former climatic or weather patterns, vegetation cover or animal life. The comparison of meanings may also indicate the ways in which early peoples changed the countryside, by clearing the woodlands, dr