The -by has passed into English as ‘by-law’ meaning the local law of the town or village. Place names ending in -thorpe, such as Scunthorpe. The -thorpe names are connected with secondary settlement, where the settlements were on the margins or on poor lands. There are 155 place names ending in -thorpe in Yorkshire.
Why do places end in Ton?
A name ending in ton refers to a farmstead or village. Wich, wych or wick: This relates to some sort of specialised farm, and turns up in places like Droitwich, Nantwich, and also the Aldwych in London.
Why do towns end in Thorpe?
Whereas the ends of names can still suggest that a place has Viking history, with suffixes such as: -thorpe, -by, -thwaite, and -kirk to name a few. A thorpe was an outlying farmstead, one that probably relied on a larger settlement nearby for protection.
What does by mean in place names?
village
List of generic forms in place names in Ireland and the United Kingdom
| Term | Origin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| by, bie | ON | settlement, village |
| carden, cardden | C, P, W | enclosure |
| caer, car | C, P, W | camp, fortification |
| caster, chester, cester, ceter | OE (| camp, fortification (of Roman origin) |
|
Why do British places end in ham?
And this convention in English, that ‘ham,’ it essentially means a village. This place is a village, a place where people live. And to take it a step further that H-A-M, ham itself, in old English means ‘home,’ which is why it sort of doubles to mean village as well. So that word ham actually means home.
Why do places end in Ford?
Ford in modern English still means to cross a river without a bridge. A town with the -ford suffix was where a river was broad and shallow so that people could cross. Oxford was a good place for a team of oxen to cross the Thames River. The word village and the suffix -ville comes to English from the French.
Why do places end in Hampton?
Recurring elements that help us to do our own detective work include the endings “-ham” and “-ton”, ancestors of “home” and “town”; Hampton is a combination of the two and Hampstead means, more or less, “homestead”.
What does Wick mean in a town name?
The suffix wich or wick in many of the place-names including Greenwich , Warwick , etc ., comes from the Anglo-Saxon wic meaning a village ; this in turn , states a writer in the Detroit News , is apparently an adaptation of the Latin vicus for village .
What did Vikings call England?
Danelaw Danelagen
Danelaw
| Danelaw Danelagen (Danish) Dena lagu (Old English) | |
|---|---|
| England, 878 | |
| Status | Confederacy under the Kingdom of Denmark |
| Common languages | Old Norse, Old English |
| Religion | Norse paganism (mostly Norsemen) Christianity (mostly Anglo-Saxons) |
What are Viking surnames?
“The people of the Viking Age did not have family names, but instead used the system of patronymics, where the children were named after their father, or occasionally their mother,” Alexandra explained to Stylist. “So, for example the son of Ivar would be given their own first name and then in addition ‘Ivar’s son’.
What is the weirdest UK town name?
Boggy Bottom, Cockermouth, Cockfosters, Crudwell, Greedy Gut, Greensplat, Ha-Ha Road, Moofield, Mudchute, Mudford Sock, No Place, Once Brewed/Twice Brewed, Penistone, Pratt’s Bottom, Pucklechurch, Queen Camel, Rotten End, Sandy Balls, Scratchy Bottom, Spanker Lane, Tiddlywink, Tokers Green, Upperthong, Ugley, Westward
What is the most common town name in the UK?
Richmond – itself named after Richmond in North Yorkshire – tops the list which also includes Oxford in third place. It has 41 settlements named after it.
What does by mean in a village name?
Settlement names ending in ‑by
The word by originally had the meaning ‘place to live. ‘ In Danish, though, the meaning must have turned into ‘village’ very early because it is extremely rare to find single farms with names in ‑by in Denmark.
Why do so many British towns end in shire?
“Shire” is just the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the old French word “county”, so Yorkshire, for example, means “County of York”. A couple of them you have to manipulate a bit, presumably because Lancastershire and Chestershire were a bit of a mouthful; but it’s still fairly obvious where the name came from.
What does Chester mean in English place names?
The English place-name Chester, and the suffixes -chester, -caster and -cester (old -ceaster), are commonly indications that the place is the site of a Roman castrum, meaning a military camp or fort (cf. Welsh caer), but it can also apply to the site of a pre-historic fort.
Why are places called Stoke?
Stoke is usually derived from the word ‘stoc’, which meant a hamlet or little settlement, which depended on a bigger settlement nearby. Meonstoke was the stoc of the Meon people. The Danish word Thorpe meant the same thing. Stow or stowe is usually derived from stowe, which meant meeting place.
Why is a town called a burg?
In the German language, Burg means ‘castle’ or ‘fortress’, though so many towns grew up around castles that it almost came to mean city, and is incorporated into many placenames, such as Hamburg, Flensburg and Strasburg.
Why are places called Minster?
The word derives from the Old English “mynster”, meaning “monastery”, “nunnery”, “mother church” or “cathedral”, itself derived from the Latin “monasterium” and the Ancient Greek “μοναστήριον”, meaning a group of clergy where the Brothers would cloister themselves to meditate .
What was England’s original name?
Englaland
The name “England” is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means “land of the Angles”. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages.
Why do villages end in by?
Place names in England
Place names ending in -by, such as Selby or Whitby. These -by endings are generally places where the Vikings settled first. In Yorkshire there are 210 -by place names. The -by has passed into English as ‘by-law’ meaning the local law of the town or village.
Why do towns end in Burg?
The variant burg had the meaning of a high place that is defendable. In German, it has kept the meaning of a medieval defensive castle, die Burg “boork”. Since towns often grew up around a lord’s castle, lots of German town names end in -burg, ditto people named for such towns.