Where do English place names come from?
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Where do English place names come from?
Most English place-names are either Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse in origin but Celtic names are to be found over the whole country, most notably in Cornwall (see below) and counties bordering Wales. Other place-names are hybrids of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon elements.
What is a gazetteer UK?
A gazetteer is a geographical index. OSNI produces four gazetteers: the Place Names gazetteer, Street Names gazetteer, 1:50,000 gazetteer and 1:250,000 gazetteer. The coordinates show the position of the text on the map, as opposed to the true ground location.
What do you call an index of place names?
About the IPN The IPN is a gazetteer linking over 70,000 named places in England and Wales to their respective administrative, health and electoral areas. It also relates places to registration districts, built-up areas and national parks.
What is the most common place 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 place names mean?
Most often the names of places are related to the original people that founded the settlement and they can often be attributed to the landscape, animals, vegetation or social activities of the area.
How many place names are there in the UK?
Over 280,000 place names are included in the gazetteer. Each place name has a category contained in the ‘Type’ field.
Why do British towns have weird names?
Roman contributions to British place names come mainly through their Latinisation of pre-Roman names. A Celtic name that had been rendered by earlier Greek visitors as Pretanniké became the Roman Britannia; an ancient name of obscure meaning became Londinium.
Why are British towns weird names?
The origin of many place names in the UK date back to Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse times and while they might not be pronounced exactly the same today, can be traced back to Celtic, Roman and old Viking settlements.
What is the local street gazetteer?
The National Street Gazetteer (NSG) is a database of all streets in England and Wales compiled from the responsible highway authorities which is restricted to local authorities and statutory undertakers (e.g. for maintenance or installing services).
What would you find in a gazetteer?
A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names (see: toponomy), used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas.
Why does Britain have such bizarre names?
What does Cote mean in village names?
Place names ending in cott or cote are usually derived from the Saxon word for house ‘cott’. DEAN OR DENE. This is usually a corruption of denu, which meant a little valley.
What does Ham at the end of a place name mean?
homestead
English: This map shows settlements, sourced from Wikipedia’s lists of places in the English counties, that end in the suffixes “-ham,” meaning “homestead,” or “-ingham,” meaning “homestead of the people.” These names are broadly accepted to have been the first kind of habitation names coined by the Germanic-speaking …
What does Ford mean in place names?
We all probably can guess what -ford implies. 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.
Why do place names 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.
What is the weirdest English 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 does thong mean in a place name?
strip of land
‘Thong’ means ‘strip of land’. This area was divided into sections: ‘nether’ meaning the lower portion and ‘upper’ meaning the higher.
Who named roads UK?
Who decides what streets are called? Street naming regulations are enshrined in UK law. Your local borough or district council is responsible for assigning street names (and house numbers). The legislation can be found in the Towns Improvement Clauses Act 1847 and the Public Health Act of 1925.
What does gazetteer mean in geography?
geographical dictionary
A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names (see: toponomy), used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas.
What is the difference between atlas and gazetteer?
This atlas is now out of print but second-hand copies are still available. Gazetteers complement atlases and are an important part of your reference collection. They all contain lists of place names; additional information may include location (in relation to other places), population, and a brief history.
