The Vocabularist – I’ll name that place in…..

Name that Place

We’ve seen in recent ‘Grammarian’ blogs how fluent the English language can be, borrowing words from all & sundry. However, the names of towns, villages, and cities have remained incredibly constant over time.

Place names persist in their original form in areas where Viking settlements were densest; for example, words such as lathe (barn) and kirk (church) are still frequently used in the North of England and in Scotland.

Common Scandinavian place names

Early place names often came about from geographical features which were used as identifiers by inhabitants and invaders alike; e.g. Jorvik (Horse Bay) = York.

• by – settlement, farm; Grimsby = Grim’s settlement
• burn – stream; Blackburn = Black stream
• thorp – outlying homestead
• toft – plot of land
• ton – farm; Shipton = Sheep farm
• wick – inlet, Lerwick
• thwaite – clearing
• don – hill; Abingdon = Aebbe’s hill
• den – valley; Willesden =

Common Latin & French place names

In the Middle Ages, Latin & French started to be used more widely, often because a family was granted lands by royal decree and used their name to assert their rights to the area; e.g. ‘Ashby-de-la-Zouch’.

• Parva & Magna – little & great; Appleby Magna = Greater Appleby
• Super – on; Weston-super-Mare = Weston-on-sea
• Coldharbour – from ‘col d’arbres’, tree-lined road
• Regis – king; a royal honour conferred upon a place = Lyme Regis

So, next time you’re bored on the motorway, or idling away the hours on the train, take a closer look at towns as you pass on by….you might already know more than you think!