Place Names And What They Mean

You will find that I have listed only a handful of place names around my local area just to give you some idea of the importance of them. And what can obtain from their meanings. However, some places like Newsham are very common around the British Isles whilst others like Grinton or Eggleston are much less common. I will bring the place names to life for you and keep it very simple and straight forward. Place names we use today are very old and can inform us something of the era of which they were created and by what date.

These are just a few place names that I have chosen area my local area and will show you just how important place names are and their meaning.

Place Name

Meaning

Grinton

Green Farmstead

Barningham

Homstead or village of the family or followers of a man called Brorn

Newsham

A new house

Eggleston

probably a farmstead of a man called Ecgel

Bowes

this name indicates a river bend

Dinsdale

nook of land belonging to Deighton

The end can provide more clues

Have a think of how many place names in your area end with TON, HAM, WORTH, OR BY

Weddington: the ton at the end of a place name means Farmstead or Village

The ham means farmstead now think of a place that ends with ham

Walworth: Worth at the end of a place name means enclosure

Aislaby is a Viking place name meaning Aislac's village. It is one of only a very small number of place names ending in 'by' in the North East north of the River Tees

Appleby in Cumbria means a Viking village where apples grew.

The British Isles place names mainly come from abroad brought over to us by Saxons, Normans and in some cases Romans and Vikings. However we also use some very old language when we talk and has stayed with us for 3000 or more years and today we still use the same sounding letter and spelling as they may have once done. So the British Isles is a right mix up of different languages and place names.

The best place name book to buy is from my website by clicking onto the Amazon Logo is called A Dictionary of British Place-names Oxford Paperback Reference. By A.D. Mills great book and very interesting if you like to find out more about place names if you can't afford this title which is very cheap you may claim the book from your local library.

Now lets look at the village of Gainford I have been studying this village for quite sometime and personally it did help to know what the place name meant. Gainford lies just off the River Tees and was an important Saxon settlement and today the church has sculptures of Saxon stone carving in its porch placed there by the Victorians when the church porch was add. I don't know if the stone came from a local quarry but I am thinking that it did and also where the old sculptures were in the church yard and yet, some documents of the Victorian era do say that some where found just lying around.

The place name has three different meanings first was the ford as they was a river crossing the Tees some think that the place name comes from the Vikings who called Gainford Gegnir as in legend the origin of the name Gainford connects it with Barforth (or Barford) which lies on the opposite bank of the River Tees. Some think that a battle was once fort at Gainford near to the ford crossing between the Vikings and Scots so I am in more inclined to say that the ford was of importance and gain may have been Anglo Saxon than anything else.

As you have just seen that place names and meanings can become confused with different elements and some can't be taken as gospel or true. You must also use evidence of documents and on some occasions folk law can reveal some clues in the origin of the place name itself. Best advice I would give is buy the book and look at your village or town and see what it means and try and back it up with documents and you be quite surprised how far back the place names extend to.

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