Words index  Vivian Cook

Placenames in England

English placenames have often been a problem to students of English as they seem to have quite different rules for pronunciation and spelling. Many of them are made up of components that were fully meaningful in earlier periods of English but say little to us today; it is only when there is flooding, we remember Oxford and Stratford have fords on rivers. Here are some common components of English placenames with what are believed to be their sources, difficult as these are to unravel over 2000 years. Mostly these reflect the practice of the Anglo-Saxons in naming the new country they had invaded in about the 6^th Century AD in what is now called Old English (OE). Sometimes they called the places by their Roman names; Colchester, Doncaster and Cirencester would have had Roman camps (castra). Sometimes they called places after the people who lived there Suffolk where the South Folk lived, Essex where the East Saxons dwelled, Goring where the people of Gor lived. Often they named it after natural features like Bournemouth (mouth of the stream) or Sheffield (open land by the river Sheaf).

 -caster, -chester, -cester etc: Lancaster, Chester, Leicester. 
    From the Old English ‘ceastra’ meaning a fortified place which in turn comes from the         Latin ‘castra’ for military camp.
- ham: Grantham, Witham, Streatham
    From the Old English (OE) ‘ham’ meaning home; there is also an OE word ‘ham’    meaning an enclosed field which underlies some placenames.
bourne/burn Bournemouth, Ouseburn, Southbourne
From the OE bourn/burn meaning a small stream
-bury, borough, burgh brough Salisbury, Edinburgh 
    From OE burh a fortified town or manor house
don/down Huntingdon, Swindon, Abingdon
    From OE dun a small hill
field  Heathfield, Sheffield
    From OE feld meaning open land
folk Suffolk, Norfolk
    From OE folc meaning people
ford Oxford, Stratford, Brentford.
    From OE. Ford river crossing
-hythe  Hythe, Rotherhythe, Lambeth (Lamb-hythe) 
    From OE hyth a small port often on a river
-ing, -ingas, ingham Birmingham Goring,
From OF inga people??????? The difference between these seems too subtle for us rto appreciate now. Sometimes the ending means ‘followers of’ (Beormund etc); sometimes simply ‘people’ CHECK
Lea/leigh/ly    Burley, Leigh-on-sea, Eastleigh          
    From OE lea wood or cultivated land
-wich Middlewich, Nantwich
    From OE díc (ditch) (used for salt-mining towns where ditches were dug)
-shire Yorkshire, Lancashire
    From OE scir meaning an administrative division of the country
-stead: Hampstead, Greenstead
    From OE stede inhabited place