![]() Place names ending in -by, for instance, like Whitby and Derby derive from the Old Norse word by ‘settlement’. The heat map on the right shows a rough representation of the concentration of Viking place names, on the basis of data by Key to English Place NamesĪnother group to make a major contribution to English place names were the Vikings, who not only raided and plundered, but also settled in England and founded villages and towns which they gave Scandinavian names. In come the Vikings! Viking place names in England. The Old English place name element -ingas means something like “the descendants, followers or people of” and, so, Reading used to be the place where the people of Ræda lived in Hastings lived the descendants of a man called Hæsta. The Jutes do not seem to have lend their names to a place, but other ‘Anglo-Saxon’ people did. Apparently, there we no Saxons in the North – a common pun is that the Northern Saxons only lasted for one generation since they had Nosex. The Saxons gave their name to Sussex, Essex, Wessex and Middlesex that is the Saxons in the South, in the East, in the West and in the middle. We can find the Angles in East Anglia and, ultimately, in England. Sometimes, these Anglo-Saxon settlers named places and regions after themselves. burh (meaning ‘fortification’, as in Canterbury Bury St Edmunds and, simply, Bury).burna (meaning ‘stream’ as in Bournemouth and Blackburn).ford (meaning ‘crossing in a river’, as in Oxford).ham (meaning ‘home’, as in Fulham, Westham and Birmingham).These Anglo-Saxons, as they are generally referred to, bring Old English to England and its is to them that we owe place names that contain such elements as 501Īfter the Romans left Britain in 410 AD, the remaining Celts eventually had to give way to Germanic invaders from the European Continent: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who come over from Northern Germany and Southern Denmark. In this year, Port came to Britain along with his two sons Bieda and Mægla in two ships to the place that is called Portsmouth and they killed a young British man, a very noble man. Intriguingly, the ninth-century compilers of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle appear to have assumed that the name derived from a man called Port, who landed there in 501 with his sons Bieda and Mægla: The Latin word for ‘harbour’, portus, can be seen in Portsmouth – mouth of the harbour. The Latin word vicus for ‘settlement’ is found at the end of the places Norwich and Sandwich (though via Old English wic). ![]() In other words, Winchester, Lancaster, Leicester and Chester all show traces of Roman occupation of what is now England. Place names with an element like – chester, for instance, ultimately derive from Roman army camps, denoted by the Latin word castra (though via Old English ceaster). In the first century AD, Britain was conquered by the Romans and their influence too can be found in English place names. In addition, about two-thirds of English rivers today have English names, these include the rivers Avon, Trent, Tyne and the Thames – most of these river names excitingly mean ‘river’. ![]() The place name Dover, for instance, derives from a Celtic word for ‘waters’ and the first part of Carlisle stems from a Celtic word for ‘fort’ (cf. These Celtic speakers have left their traces in the toponyms (place names, river names) of present-day England. If we were to go back some 2500 years in time, Britain was inhabited by people who spoke Celtic languages (present-day Welsh and Cornish are among the linguistic descendants of these languages). The Celtic helmet is based on the Waterloo Helmet *map altered slightly on due to misplacement of Carlisle* Traces of Celts and Romans Map with some Celtic and Roman place names. What do the English place names Everton, Oxford, Winchester and Whitby have in common? They have all been around for more than a thousand years and their origins and original meanings can shed a unique light on the fascinating early history of England!
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