What's in a place name?

Place names are an indelible marker of the history of England. All tell stories about the people who came before us, many of these tales are romantic, tragic, or simply bizarre. Purbrook in Hampshire means ‘brook haunted by a goblin’, while Morpeth in Northumberland derives from ‘path where murders took place’. Newton Flotman in Norfolk was a new farm owned by a ‘floating man’ – otherwise known as a Viking – and Gatwick in Sussex began life as a ‘farm where goats are kept’. How times have changed.

Some English place names date back 2,000 years. During that time, four waves of invaders – the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans – have brought their own cultures and languages. They did not wipe out the people they conquered. Instead, they settled down, intermarried and had children, and this mingling is reflected in place names that are often as hybrid as the people who invented them. This may lead to false assumptions. Minehead in Somerset had nothing to do with coal-mining – its name is a combination of a Celtic word for ‘hill’ and an Old English addition meaning ‘promontory’. By contrast, the meaning of Mousehole in Cornwall really is as straightforward as the name suggests: it’s named after a sea cave to the south of the harbour known locally as “the mouse hole” – although the locals pronounce it ‘Mowzle’ to keep us on our toes.

In the beginning, there were the Celts or Britons. Their language endures as Cornish, Welsh and Gaelic, and in many place names of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Outside Cornwall, however, most Celtic settlement names in England have been lost – the names that have come down to us are those they gave to hills and rivers, such as Avon. Penn, meaning ‘head’ (mistranslated by the Anglo-Saxons as ‘hill’), survives in place names such as Penzance in Cornwall and Penrith in Cumbria.

The Romans, who landed in AD43, ruled Britannia for almost 400 years. But while their roads have often stayed the distance, few Latin names from this period survive. The Anglo-Saxons, who arrived in the fifth century, translated and adapted them using their own language – Old English – and the vast majority of modern English settlement names have their origins here. The two most common elements are –ham and –ton, from ham (meaning ‘homestead’ and eventually ‘village’) and tun (‘farmstead’, then ‘town’). Taunton was ‘a farmstead on the River Tone’ – the name of river meaning it was sparkling and fast-flowing. Needham Market in Suffolk was a ‘poor and needy homestead’ before it became a prosperous medieval market town.

Animals have been hunted and farmed from the earliest times, and many Anglo-Saxon place names reflect this. Sheep are commemorated in several Shiptons and Shipleys. There were few sheep in Wool, Dorset, however – the name has the same derivation as Wells in Somerset and means ‘place at the spring’. The residents of Oxford kept cattle; pigs rootled around Swinefleet in Yorkshire; deer were a popular quarry at West Dereham, Norfolk. They may be there still, but the beavers of Beverley in Yorkshire and wolves of Wolford in Warwickshire are long gone.

After the Viking invasion of the ninth century, Alfred the Great made a deal with the invaders, drawing an imaginary line across England roughly from London to Chester. The Danish assumed control of everything to the north and east of that line – the Danelaw – and their influence on place names was profound. Towns that were originally farmsteads end in -by rather than -ham (such as Whitby, North Yorkshire), and the Old Scandinavian for homestead was toft (as in Lowestoft, Suffolk).

In the northwest, meanwhile, Cumbria was settled by Norwegians, with knock-on effects on place names. Thwaite, meaning ‘clearing or meadow’, crops up regularly: Bassenthwaite once belonged to a family called Bastun, flax was grown in Linthwaite, and calves were kept in Calthwaite. More evocative is Armathwaite – ‘clearing of the hermit’ – where there was a Benedictine nunnery from the 11th century.

Cornwall also stands apart in terms of place names. It withstood the Romans and the Saxons, remaining an independent kingdom until the 11th century. This fierce independence accounts for Cornwall’s many Celtic place names. Exotic-sounding Marazion is simply Old Cornish for ‘little market’. Tintagel may be a spine-tingling setting for Arthurian legend, but its prosaic translation is ‘fort by the neck of land’.

Another great influence on English place names was Christianity. Missionaries are commemorated in place names such as Padstow, Cornwall, named, not for that patron saint of fish, Rick Stein, but after St Petroc (who may have been confused with St Patrick, leading to ‘Pad’ as in Paddy). St Ives is named after an Irish saint who, according to legend, floated across to Cornwall on an ivy leaf.

When William the Conqueror became the first Norman king of England in 1066, he confiscated Saxon land and gave it away to his own nobles and the church. The new owners generally did not change the names of the estates they acquired; they simply added to them, giving us roll-it-around-the-tongue-and-savour-it names such as Stansted Mountfichet in Essex and Kingsbury Episcopi (‘the king’s manor that now belongs to the bishop’) in Somerset.

It would be wrong to assume that all English place names date from the Middle Ages, however. The Industrial Revolution created new towns, such as Fleetwood in Lancashire, named after the local MP who founded it. Westward Ho! in Devon, the only place name in Britain that ends with an exclamation mark, was originally the title of an 1855 novel by Charles Kingsley, set in nearby Bideford. When its popularity attracted holidaymakers to the area, it was annexed by entrepreneurs, who were building a hotel.

Like Westward Ho!, some names on the map of England are so delicious that we savour them regardless of their meaning. Nempnett Thrubwell in Somerset and Steeple Bumpstead in Essex could be straight out of a Victorian novel. Badgers Mount in Kent makes you want to laugh out loud. Goonbell (‘distant open pasture’) in Cornwall and Irthlingborough in Northamptonshire are almost otherworldly in their evocativeness. Sadly the latter means ‘fortified manor belonging to ploughmen’. It could be worse: pity the people who live in Ugley and Nasty in Hertfordshire.

Adapted from 'The Book of English Place Names: how our towns and villages got their names' by Caroline Taggart (Ebury Press, £9.99). CL readers can order a copy at the special price of £9.49 with free p&p, visit www.allaboutyoubookshop.co.uk.