British toponymy

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British toponymy (relating to the mainland and islands closely linked to it including the Shetland Islands, the Orkney Islands, and the Channel Islands) is the study of place names, their origins and the trends associated with naming places in specific regional areas. It is different from the study of etymology, which is concerned mainly with the origin of the name of a specific place.

British toponymy is rich, complex and difficult. Moreover it is extremely inexact and non-empirical. Many British forms and names have been corrupted over the years through being occupied by many different groups of people speaking different languages with similar words meaning different things. In some cases words used in place names are derived from languages that are extinct, and of which there are no extant known definitions. There are also many compounds between two separate languages from separate periods.

The oldest and most ancient of place names tend to be rivers, and are assumed to descend from Old European pre-Celtic languages (of which nothing is known), and must be at least Neolithic in age. There are many other languages which have shaped and informed the nomenclature of Britain: various Celtic languages (including Brythonic, Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish and Pictish), Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Norman French, modern French and a few others besides.

The Anglo-Saxons contributed elements such as -ing-, -ham-, -ton, -bury, -stead, -ford, and -ley. Scandinavian place names such as -by, thorpe, and toft are commonest in the area covered by the Danelaw, the north and east of England north of Watling Street. Also in this area, church becomes kirk and ditch becomes dike. In the south and west of England, place names are more Anglo-Saxon and Celtic with the Celtic influence greater in the west.

Place names in Cornwall are largely Celtic, with elements such as tre-, pen-, and lan-. Names in Wales are almost entirely of Celtic origin, a very common element being llan-.

In southern Scotland, place names tend to be a mixture of Celtic and Scandinavian. In the Scottish Highlands names are generally Gaelic (such as loch, glen, and inver), with Norse influence around the coasts and islands (including island names ending in -ay).

Chester, -caster, -ceter, or other similar elements, indicate a Roman fort or settlement. Medieval Latin added various elements such as Regis (of the King), Magna (great), and Parva (little). Some names are suffixed with the name of a landowning family, as in Stanton Lacy, and some names reflect a connection with the church, such as Monkwearmouth and Newton Abbot.

Sometimes, identifying the origins and meaning of a name is easy. The modern form of the name may reflect its original meaning. A good example of this is Box Hill, Surrey which is what it says it is: a hill upon which box once grew. Sometimes it is not: Beadlam, North Yorkshire (grid reference SE 654 846) has nothing to do with the lunatic asylum (Bedlam, from Bethlehem) of earlier times, but is from Anglo-Saxon (æt) bōðlum = "at the buildings", or its Old Norse equivalent. See "The place-names of the North Riding of Yorkshire" by A H Smith (Cambridge 1928), page 66.

Back-formation is the process whereby modern names are given to rivers that had the original names forgotten, so the river is named after the town or valley rather than vice versa: e.g. the river running through Rochdale became known as the "Roch" through this process.