The etymology or meaning of place names both in Britain and other countries became a matter of considerable public interest in the latter part of the 19th century. The English Place-Name Society was established with the support of the Royal Academy to facilitate the study of place names in England.
Most English place names have been in existence since the Norman conquest and many are recorded far earlier. In England we are fortunate in having a large number of documents dating back as far as the end of the 7th century which contain the contemporary forms of place name throughout the country.
Place names consist of, or are compounded of, ordinary everyday words of the time and personal names. Place names broadly follow the same lines of cevelopment (with certain peculiar tendencies) as personal names.
To interpret any place name, it is necessary to have;-
all the available forms of the name (dated) from the earliest available records, arranged in chronological order
a knowledge of the topography of the place and its immediate surroundings
in many cases, a knowledge of similar names elsewhere and their early forms
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| | | Some place names are easy to interpret. They consist of two elements, the second being descriptive such as (in their modern forms)
-bury (a fortified place),
-field (homestead),
-ham (homestead),
-hill,
-ley (a clearing),
-port (town),
-ton (farm),
-wick or -wich (dwelling place), etc.
The first element of the name usually consists of either a personal name,e.g.
Badby, Old English Baddanby, "Badda's farm";
Blisworth, 12th century Blithesworth, "Blithe's enclosure";
Brighton in Sussex, Old English Brihthelmestun, "Brihthelm's farm or estate";
or of a noun or adjective which qualifies or limits the second element, e.g.
Barton, Old English beretun, "barley farm";
Caldicott, Old English coldecota, "cold cottage";
Calverley, Old English Calfra Leah, "calve's field or clearing";
Higham, Old English heah ham, "high homestead";
Preston, Old English Preosttun, "Priest's farm"; and,
Radcliffe, Old English readclif, "red cliff".
It should be noticed that the Old English forms of the names in the above examples are very different in appearance from their modern counterparts and it would be impossible to interpret the names without some understanding of the language.
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Some of the modern forms, such as "Purewell" already mentioned above, can be misleading. Other examples of potentially misleading modern place names are
Heathencote in Northamptonshire, which is shown by its early forms to have no connection with heathens but means "Heahmund's cottage" (Heahmund being a popular Old English personal name);
an earlier form of Luckless Cottage in Devon is "Luveclives" derived from the personal name de Luveclife (the OE form "Leofanclif" meaning "Leofa's hillside"); and,
Sheepstor also in Devon (unlike Shapwick in Dorset) has no connection with sheep, its original Old English form of "scyttelstor" meaning "tor shaped like a bolt".
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Signposts to the Past
by M Gelling, publisher Phillimore and Co., Chichester, 1988
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