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Chapter 3

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3.1 Linguistics in place names

There is a lot of history in place names, and some linguistics too. The diversity of English place names certainly reflects the history we have been considering. To start with the capital: though the exact origin of the word London is disputed, it may well have had Celtic origins. Perhaps it is Llyn-don – the town (don) by the lake (llyn), or perhaps Laindon meaning ‘long hill’. It sits on the river Thames, from Celtic Tamesas, meaning ‘dark river’. There are plenty of other Celtic river names in England – Avon and Ouse meant ‘water’ or ‘stream’. And there are other place names with Celtic origins that have survived: Devon, Kent and Cumbria, for example.

The Romans also left plenty of place-name evidence of their presence. The suffix -chester comes from the Latin castrum meaning encampment. The names Manchester and Lancaster are interesting for two reasons. One is that in both cases the word to which the suffix is attached is a Celtic one. The first element of Manchester is probably related to the Celtic *mamm meaning a ‘breast-like hill’. As for Lancaster, the word means the encampment on the river Lune – a Celtic river name probably meaning ‘healthy, pure’. By combining Celtic and Latin origins, these place names show evidence of two stages of Britain’s early history. Secondly, notice the slightly different suffix. -chester is the Anglo-Saxon form of the Latin. But Old Norse did not have the ‘ch’ [tʃ] sound and replaced it with [k], to give -caster in some parts of the Danelaw area. The city of Lancaster, further north than Manchester, shows this ON form. This sound difference is discussed in more detail in 5.3.3.

Anglo-Saxon place names are to be found everywhere. There are towns ending with the suffix -ton (the OE for ‘farmstead’), or -ham (‘homestead’), or -ley (‘wood’), or containing an -ing (OE for ‘the people of’ or ‘belonging to’, hence the Vikings may be ‘the people of the fjord’). If you have access to a map of England, take a moment to find a few examples of these place-name suffixes. Old Norse names are also common, particularly in northern and eastern Danelaw areas where the Vikings settled. In fact, there are more than 1400 Old Norse-derived place names in England. You may wish to try and find some of the following places on a map too: Grimsby, Grimethorpe, Micklethwaite, Lowestoft, Troutbeck, Swaledale. Use the internet or some other source to identify what the underlined suffixes mean.

Finally, wherever in the world you are, think about the name of the place where you come from or are now living. What is the origin of the name? What history and what linguistics does it reveal? It might tell you something about its geographical position, about what it was famous for . . . and about the language spoken when it was founded.