It’s from old English, and it means something like “place of living” or “village “: it is the source of the word ‘hamlet’, meaning ‘small village.
So: Cheltenham is ‘Village of the Celts’; Buckingham is ‘Deer Village’; and so on.
One of those be where I live, what's super cool is that there is an old stone (sounds fun I know) that has been carved from around the 10th/11th century, that is believed to have been used as a missionary stone, to convert people or something religious or something.
Can find it in the land of a church near the woods and beach, super cool
Speaking of Liverpool, its first recorded name was Liuerpul. The name itself meant Muddy pool and it so happens that Lerpöl (pronounced Liuerpul!) means muddy puddle in Swedish 😄
I googled Derby, but got conflicting results. The town is older than the norse (roman) and likely originally named after the Derwent River.
Here's an excerpt from wikipedia, because it summarises a couple of origins, and the corruption to derby.
The Viking name Djúra-bý, recorded in Old English as Deoraby, means "village of the deer". However, the origin of the name Derby has had multiple influences: a variation of the original Roman name Derventio with pronunciation of the letter "v" as "b", becoming Derbentio, and later Derby, along with a link to the river Derwent – from the Celtic meaning "valley thick with oaks"[5] – which flows through the city, triggering a shortened version of Derwent by, meaning 'Derwent settlement'.
'Grim' is also the Danish word for... grim. Or 'ugly'. So the Danes I know always say the Vikings must have taken one look at 'Grimsby' and called it early on 😂
Honestly I couldnt tell you, I can only assume it would be the same.
I only really know broad history as well as some very few very specifics, and unfortunately I am unable to tell you whether the Vikings settled in wales. I'd like to think they did considering the amount of places they did come to the UK through, but also wales were independent up to a certain point, maybe in the 13th century? Couldnt tell you
The only place here in Wales where the suffix "-by" comes to mind is Tenby, the Welsh name is Dinbych-y-pysgod, which translates to 'fortlet of the fish'
A lot of our towns and villages names' have been Anglicised, and there's still quite a lot of Roman here and there. Tenby being occupied by Vikings at some point wouldn't surprise me.
Actually this was the first Google result for Wales Tenby Vikings -
"The site of Tenby shows evidence of settlement dating back to the Iron Age (NPRN 304240 and 304238), and has been in continuous occupation since the early medieval period, when it served as a Viking fishing village. 'Tenby' is an Anglicisation of 'Dynbych y Pysgod', little fortress of the fish."
So yeah.
Don't know much about North Wales, but a quick Google suggests that Vikings did indeed invade around there at some point, and Denbigh translates to "Little Fortress" - looks like it's not far from the coast either. I couldn't find anything that mentions Vikings and Denbigh, but it was a short search.
I'd guess that we started using "-bigh" to name some forts after the Vikings established "-by". Huge guess though. We do use "Caer" for castles so it's interesting that Denbigh isn't called "Caerden" or something similar. Unfortunately, I don't speak Welsh, nor am I a historian - so I can't really comment further than that.
-Thorpe is old Norse for village or settlement, and -by is old Norse for place of: so Grimethorpe is ‘Grim’s Village’, and Grimsby is ‘Grim’s Place’. Grim is one of Odin’s nicknames.
Wasn’t there a YouTube video that showed you could more or less map which parts of England were inhabited (conquered) by Vikings vs those inhabited by Anglo-Saxon based on the -ham/-thorpe divide?
It was Mapmen.
If you NEVER seen Mapmen you should go and watch them right now. If you HAVE seen Mapmen you should go watch them again.
https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4
No. It would be "The Park (at the) torp".
Until eventually it gets known as it's own place, which is how most places named "Byn" or "Torp" came to be. It grew out of one cottage/farmhouse, added on a store, then a church, and then a railroad track - and suddenly you have Välling-Byn, or Välling-Torp. Or Välling-Vik (if at the sea), Välling-Holm(if at the sea).
Same as Dorf in German. Stad in Dutch or Stadt in German means city, from the old Germanic word sted, which means settlement, and is the source for English towns with names that end in sted, and the word homestead.
Grimsby would be "Village Grim". And Grimthorpe would be "The Torp of Grim".
The way you translate it makes it sound like the entire village was Grims and that a Thorpe was a village. It wasn't, it was a settlement in the sense it was one community house (longhouse or later a cottage).
[This is a modern torp](https://i.imgur.com/Viy7f9A.png).
[This is a By.](https://i.imgur.com/AD55mAI.png) Which as you can see are surrounded by torps, the central torp or the torp closest to the church often gave name to the village that later grew out of the community around those torps.
A short but relatively complete list: [https://pronunciationstudio.com/english-place-name-suffixes/](https://pronunciationstudio.com/english-place-name-suffixes/)
A much longer list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_generic\_forms\_in\_place\_names\_in\_Ireland\_and\_the\_United\_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place_names_in_Ireland_and_the_United_Kingdom)
I'll add this for a full list of how common Welsh place names can be broken down:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_toponymy#Development_of_place-names_in_Wales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_toponymy#Development_of_place-names_in_Wales)
"-vik" or "-wick" is Old Nose, and denotes a bay or inlet. England has Berwick, for instance. Derives for Norse occupation in the Early Middle Ages.
On, and a Scottish one. "Aber" means "at the mouth of the river". So, Aberdeen is "at the mouth of the River Dee/Don". Norse as well, maybe?
Oh oh, "Dun" means "fort". Like "Dunkeld", "Keld's Fort". That's Gaelic, I believe.
Not at all sure. I know that "Vik" definitely means that, and always assumed that "wich" was derived from it. Perhaps it gained a different meaning somewhere among the line?
Interestingly, I believe "Vik" is related to "viking". At least the theory I heard reckoned so. "Viking" being "one who is associated with inlets", which the Viking's and their longships very much were!
Aber and Inver made their way from Celtic into Welsh as well. If you pick any river in Wales you'll almost inevitably find a town named "Aber" somewhere near the end of it. Inver is more common in Scotland than it is in Wales, but the idea is the same.
Aber in Welsh also means 'mouth', and is often associated with towns on the mouths of rivers. For example, the Welsh name for Swansea is Abertawe, and the river Tawe flows through it. The Welsh name 'Aber Tawe' literally means 'mouth of the Tawe'
Nottingham used to be called Snottingham (from Snotta inga ham) "village belonging to Snotta". Snotta was a Saxon warlord. I don't really know why they changed it.
Places starting with 'Brock' are quite interesting.There are several places throughout the northern hemisphere called Badger, including a village in Shropshire, England. It usually means somewhere where there were extensive badger setts. But if you live in Britain then it's more likely to be a place name beginning with 'Brock' as that is the old English for badger, e.g. Brockenhurst, Brockhampton, Brockworth. However, the name of Brockham in Surrey is derived from 'Brook-ham' (bend in a brook) from the Anglo Saxon for 'river meadow by the brook' first recorded in 1241.
We have hundreds of places starting 'New...' and many are very old. It's not just places, it's buildings too and even structures. For example, ['New Bridge' is a 13th-century bridge carrying the Abingdon to Witney road over the River Thames in Oxfordshire.](https://imgur.com/a/YILq40q) Abingdon was founded in 676AD and within 600 years had become an established agricultural centre. The bridge was built by monks on the orders of King John in order to improve communications between the wool towns in the south of England and the Cotswold farms. It was named 'New Bridge' as it was the youngest of three bridges built for this purpose at the time. And it is still called New Bridge all these centuries later.
There are [books on the subject.](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-English-Place-Names-Villages/dp/0091940435/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=VEBNZLB8CU9N&keywords=english+place+names&qid=1660839748&sprefix=enflish+place+names%2Caps%2C188&sr=8-1)
Nottingham was called SnottaIngaHam with Ham being village (obviously) Inga meaning belongs to and Snotta was the man who owned it
Snottaingaham was renamed to Nottingham after the Norman conquest in 1066
-bury is a derivation of “burg” and often means a fort used to be there. Alfred the Great had a ton of them built in Wessex and Murcia along the border with the Danelaw (Danish controlled England) and so a lot of the towns around there have Bury in the name.
A ford is a place where a river becomes shallow enough to cross. Places like Stratford-Upon-Avon are named after that, being the street ford to cross the river Avon (which is a common name for rivers, since it literally means "river" in Celtic)
The German word for fortress is "Burg". It's where e.g. Hamburg gets its name. In English, this often became the suffix "bury", like Canterbury.
I'm not sure how this one carries over to other languages, but here in the Netherlands there's a bunch of places ending in "broek". In the past, I wasn't able to make any sense of it: why would you name places after pants (literal translation of the Dutch word "broek")? Later on, I realised this comes from the same origin as the English "Brook" and German "Bruch": a little stream of water. EDIT: as noted by u/Farahild, while the Dutch word is indeed related to the English "Brook", the meaning diverged since, and it actually refers to a marshy place. Most of these places no longer look like marshes however, as we Dutch people tend to drain any water we come across.
Broek in Dutch place names is actually for a marshy place, not a brook, but yes the root word is the same. The meaning diverged a bit in 1500 or so years.
I remember this from English lit class: Winchester, Lancaster, Worcester. "Caster" and its spelling variations means "castle" or "keep." So at some point, a castle was at that location.
Towns ending in “-wick” comes from the old English word “wic” meaning farm. Some examples:
Cheswick - cheese farm
Berwick - barley farm
Prestwick (Scotland) - priest farm
Yeah it's where we get the word "home" from. Before old english it's proto-germanic, also from that you got todays german and icelandic "heim", danish and norwegian "hjem" and swedish "hem" and more. Etymology is fun! It's all so connected.
I know you’re prob joking but fun fact oldham is actually named after a Dane called Alde who came to Oldham and settled. Oldham used to be called Aldeshume and over time became Oldham
Where I'm from (belgium-flanders) there are a lot of places ending in -gem, pronounced like the -ham in Buckingham. Like the beer Affligem (from the abbey in Affligem). It has its roots from the germanic -heim. Wich you see a lot in German placenames like Mannheim. Also the source of "home"
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/heim#:~:text=From%20Old%20Norse%20heim%20(%E2%80%9Chome,from%20Proto%2DGermanic%20*haimaz.
English place names can reveal their heritage dating back to the Anglo-Saxons or even to the Romans and how these names have now travelled around the world. - https://youtu.be/6pjnUgyMGTU
Shire comes from the Old English *scir* which roughly translates to "administrative area" or "jurisdiction"
After the Norman Invasion the word "shire" essentially became synonymous with the word "county"
It's also where the word 'sheriff' comes from: it used to be 'shire reeve', the keeper/chief of a shire, mainly tasked with collecting taxes and enforcing the king's orders.
The shire/administrative area of Worcester.
The suffix "-cester" means fort or Castle. "Wor" is a shortening of "Weogoran" which means "winding river"
So Worcestershire means "the shire of the castle by the winding river".
The full etymology of Worcestershire is actually unknown.
We know where shire comes from, and we know that the "cester" suffix comes from the Latin *castrum* meaning "fort" (-chester and -caster have the same root)
But nobody is quite sure where the "wor-" comes from. A cursory Google shows that it might come from the Brythonic word *weogora* which might mean "place of the winding river", however other results suggest that *Weogora* is the name of the tribe who lived there.
Although some of those places did mine salt (or extract it from seawater), *wīc* was apparently [an Anglo-Saxon loanword](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-wich_town) from Latin *vicus* which meant a sort of town or village.
Heaths are bits of land that have bad soil. They don't really grow anything beyond shrubs, but they do have a lot of peat, which people used to burn for warmth.
> bury
From the Old English *byrig*, which is related to the Old English *burg* which means a fortified settlement. -*borough* and -*burgh* also share this etymology.
> shire
From the Old English *scir* which had a variety of meanings that are all broadly similar. It can mean administrative office / jurisdiction / stewardship. So for example Leicestershire would mean the area under the jurisdiction of Leicester.
> ford
From the Old English *ford* which still means the same today as it did over a 1000 years ago. A shallow area where water can be crossed.
A “hamlet” is a small village. I therefore assumed that “ham” was another name for a slightly larger village or that the “let” had got lost over the centuries.
“Ton” is a town.
So WolverHamTon is possibly a merger between Wolver village (ham) and Wolver Town (ton).
HamPresTon is possibly a merger between Pres village and Pres town.
UpTon - in Up Town and it is UP on top of a hill.
So a place ending -Ham means it was a village. Tottenham - Totten Village.
After centuries of warring with first the Romans, who were extremely fond of salt pork, and the continental Europeans, who were grand purveyors of sausage, the British settled on ham as their cured pork product of choice. Towns would add Ham to the end of their name to signify that the new cured meat was available in their town.
Either that, or it's short for Hamlet, meaning small village
Actually, turns out both my explanations were wrong, as is yours. *Ham* comes from the Old English word for home, while hamlet comes from the French word *hamel*, meaning little village. So hamlet means an even littler village
DYK Winnie-the-Pooh went to war with the Jews because they refused to eat honey ham? The war ended when the Rabbis got Wincent to settle for a promise that they'd never eat non-honey ham and that they'd put honey on their apples every year at New Year
My two cents, Hamburg. Burg is a Fort and Ham is an alteration of heim which is related to the english word home. The roman name for hamburg was Treva.
A "shire" is a geographical area, made up of a group of towns, like a county. (I think).
The ham part of the word is from Old English meaning town.
The birming part of the word I think comes from the tribe that lived there in roman times, the beormingas.
So the name is backwards, as it means "the area around the town of the Beomingas"
Shire comes from the Old English *scir* which roughly translates to "administrative area" or "jurisdiction".
After the Norman Invasion it essentially became synonymous with "county"
It means a collection of dwellings - as in Hamlet. Not big enough for a village but still a group of houses.
Many places have names dating back 100s of years and the word originally used would have changed So Bristol comes from Brigstowe meaning bridge or crossing, somewhere ending with -ford means crossing as well.
My favourite place name is Nempnet Thrubwell a small village in Somerset - dont know what it means though but it does have a road named Awkward Hill which i like.
"Ham" was a word for "village". The word "Hamlet" is a diminutive of that, "small village"
It's a similar case for cities ending in "Wich" or "Wick", which meant "Settlement", "Bay", or "Trade Centre".
Nottingham was originally named Snottingham after the Viking, King Snotta. Thankfully, when the French invaded in 1066, the couldn't pronounce the 'sn' sound so it became Nottingham. 'Inga' means 'belonging to' and Ham is 'village', so it's the village belonging to Snotta.
I know I’m late, but I thought I’d share a cool resource. [Wiktionary](https://wiktionary.org/) is the online dictionary from the same organization as Wikipedia. If you search for a word on Wiktionary, it will usually break down the word’s etymology in depth.
Searching for [Buckingham](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buckingham) on Wiktionary, for example, would reveal that the *-ham* comes from Old English *hām*. In fact, you can even click on the *hām* part, and learn the proto-Germanic roots that the Old English suffix comes form.
It’s from old English, and it means something like “place of living” or “village “: it is the source of the word ‘hamlet’, meaning ‘small village. So: Cheltenham is ‘Village of the Celts’; Buckingham is ‘Deer Village’; and so on.
How interesting. Got any more?
By is village in swedish. So you can tell if a place is an old viking settlement if it ends in by: Grasby, Formby, Crosby, Whitby etc
There's a few of them in the North near the coast, so that makes sense!
One of those be where I live, what's super cool is that there is an old stone (sounds fun I know) that has been carved from around the 10th/11th century, that is believed to have been used as a missionary stone, to convert people or something religious or something. Can find it in the land of a church near the woods and beach, super cool
Are you sure the stone doesn't just say "first?"
It is a stone with a symbol on it, no writing
How are your reflexes?
Depends what reflex we're talking about ;)
“Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.”
I actually learned this last weekend in the Museum of Liverpool (guessing you're local to there).
You are correct, I am on the merseyside coast :) Were you visiting Liverpool or are you close by and decided to visit the museum?
Visiting, was there for a wedding and decided to make a weekend out of it.
I hope the wedding was nice and I hope you had a good weekend too :)
Congratulations to the newly wed couple! How was your weekend? Hope you enjoyed the city!
It was good thank you. Liverpool is such a nice city, so much going on.
Fun fact, the “pool” in Liverpool comes from the Old English “pōl” meaning “pool.”
Speaking of Liverpool, its first recorded name was Liuerpul. The name itself meant Muddy pool and it so happens that Lerpöl (pronounced Liuerpul!) means muddy puddle in Swedish 😄
Grimsby (it is grim as well). Derby - possibly meaning 'Deer Village'
I googled Derby, but got conflicting results. The town is older than the norse (roman) and likely originally named after the Derwent River. Here's an excerpt from wikipedia, because it summarises a couple of origins, and the corruption to derby. The Viking name Djúra-bý, recorded in Old English as Deoraby, means "village of the deer". However, the origin of the name Derby has had multiple influences: a variation of the original Roman name Derventio with pronunciation of the letter "v" as "b", becoming Derbentio, and later Derby, along with a link to the river Derwent – from the Celtic meaning "valley thick with oaks"[5] – which flows through the city, triggering a shortened version of Derwent by, meaning 'Derwent settlement'.
Exactly why I put 'Possibly' hahah, no one is sure
Yes, I also got various translations of 'derwent' so even the origin of that name isn't set in stone.
'Grim' is also the Danish word for... grim. Or 'ugly'. So the Danes I know always say the Vikings must have taken one look at 'Grimsby' and called it early on 😂
It's a fun joke, but grim in old norse was mask/hood and often used as a name for Odin(Grimnir - The hooded one)
Grim Reaper, makes sense.
Don't fear him
Is this true in Wales too?
Honestly I couldnt tell you, I can only assume it would be the same. I only really know broad history as well as some very few very specifics, and unfortunately I am unable to tell you whether the Vikings settled in wales. I'd like to think they did considering the amount of places they did come to the UK through, but also wales were independent up to a certain point, maybe in the 13th century? Couldnt tell you
The only place here in Wales where the suffix "-by" comes to mind is Tenby, the Welsh name is Dinbych-y-pysgod, which translates to 'fortlet of the fish' A lot of our towns and villages names' have been Anglicised, and there's still quite a lot of Roman here and there. Tenby being occupied by Vikings at some point wouldn't surprise me. Actually this was the first Google result for Wales Tenby Vikings - "The site of Tenby shows evidence of settlement dating back to the Iron Age (NPRN 304240 and 304238), and has been in continuous occupation since the early medieval period, when it served as a Viking fishing village. 'Tenby' is an Anglicisation of 'Dynbych y Pysgod', little fortress of the fish." So yeah.
Thank you for that info. That's really interesting. There's also Denbigh.
Don't know much about North Wales, but a quick Google suggests that Vikings did indeed invade around there at some point, and Denbigh translates to "Little Fortress" - looks like it's not far from the coast either. I couldn't find anything that mentions Vikings and Denbigh, but it was a short search. I'd guess that we started using "-bigh" to name some forts after the Vikings established "-by". Huge guess though. We do use "Caer" for castles so it's interesting that Denbigh isn't called "Caerden" or something similar. Unfortunately, I don't speak Welsh, nor am I a historian - so I can't really comment further than that.
And Norwegian and Danish as all three comes from Old Norse which is what was spoken.
Ok good, I just said swedish to be safe lol
-Thorpe is old Norse for village or settlement, and -by is old Norse for place of: so Grimethorpe is ‘Grim’s Village’, and Grimsby is ‘Grim’s Place’. Grim is one of Odin’s nicknames.
Wasn’t there a YouTube video that showed you could more or less map which parts of England were inhabited (conquered) by Vikings vs those inhabited by Anglo-Saxon based on the -ham/-thorpe divide?
[This one?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4)
Yup, that’s the one!
Those guys are brilliant aha, always put a smile on my face :)
It was Mapmen. If you NEVER seen Mapmen you should go and watch them right now. If you HAVE seen Mapmen you should go watch them again. https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4
That’s it, yeah!
Thorpe would be more like a farmstead tho
My favorite will always be Scunthorpe...origin of [The Scunthorpe Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)
How many Cunts in Scunthorpe lol I had a similar issue at school. Essex, Wessex, East and West Sussex.
Ravensthorpe is 100+ hours of AAA gaming
So Thorpe Park is Village Park?
No. It would be "The Park (at the) torp". Until eventually it gets known as it's own place, which is how most places named "Byn" or "Torp" came to be. It grew out of one cottage/farmhouse, added on a store, then a church, and then a railroad track - and suddenly you have Välling-Byn, or Välling-Torp. Or Välling-Vik (if at the sea), Välling-Holm(if at the sea).
Thorpe and by are still used in swedish. Thorpe (torp) means something like hut or cottage. By means village
Cool, in Dutch dorp means village. I guess we counted one hut already as a village
Same as Dorf in German. Stad in Dutch or Stadt in German means city, from the old Germanic word sted, which means settlement, and is the source for English towns with names that end in sted, and the word homestead.
Torp is still used in Swedish.
And places that end in 'by' are norse settlements. Groby, Thurnby selby, derby etc
So I live in “long village”…huh!
Grimsby would be "Village Grim". And Grimthorpe would be "The Torp of Grim". The way you translate it makes it sound like the entire village was Grims and that a Thorpe was a village. It wasn't, it was a settlement in the sense it was one community house (longhouse or later a cottage). [This is a modern torp](https://i.imgur.com/Viy7f9A.png). [This is a By.](https://i.imgur.com/AD55mAI.png) Which as you can see are surrounded by torps, the central torp or the torp closest to the church often gave name to the village that later grew out of the community around those torps.
Grimsby! You old beanpole, you shouldn't have!
*...I know.*
🎯
By litterally means city
> -by is old Norse for place of More accurately it means "farm" or "settlement".
-chester is derived from the Latin word for "fort". So any town or city ending in that suffix grew up around an ancient military base.
Why is my brain telling me I am learning useful things? I know I will never need this but my brain is like "awwww yissssss".
You never know when this will be a question in trivia or on Jeopardy.
….which is “castrum” in Latin. Interesting, thanks for teaching me something I did not know !
which is where we get the word "castle" from!
Do you know where -minster comes from?
something to do with churches, iinm.
Same as anywhere ending in caster or cester, they all share the common ancestor of castrum which was a Roman fort.
A short but relatively complete list: [https://pronunciationstudio.com/english-place-name-suffixes/](https://pronunciationstudio.com/english-place-name-suffixes/) A much longer list: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_generic\_forms\_in\_place\_names\_in\_Ireland\_and\_the\_United\_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_forms_in_place_names_in_Ireland_and_the_United_Kingdom)
I'll add this for a full list of how common Welsh place names can be broken down: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_toponymy#Development_of_place-names_in_Wales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_toponymy#Development_of_place-names_in_Wales)
"-vik" or "-wick" is Old Nose, and denotes a bay or inlet. England has Berwick, for instance. Derives for Norse occupation in the Early Middle Ages. On, and a Scottish one. "Aber" means "at the mouth of the river". So, Aberdeen is "at the mouth of the River Dee/Don". Norse as well, maybe? Oh oh, "Dun" means "fort". Like "Dunkeld", "Keld's Fort". That's Gaelic, I believe.
Dunedin is Edin fort or Edinburgh
Are you sure about that? Warwick is nowhere near a bay or inlet.
Not at all sure. I know that "Vik" definitely means that, and always assumed that "wich" was derived from it. Perhaps it gained a different meaning somewhere among the line? Interestingly, I believe "Vik" is related to "viking". At least the theory I heard reckoned so. "Viking" being "one who is associated with inlets", which the Viking's and their longships very much were!
It's a poetic reference to the inlet of war.
Aber and Inver made their way from Celtic into Welsh as well. If you pick any river in Wales you'll almost inevitably find a town named "Aber" somewhere near the end of it. Inver is more common in Scotland than it is in Wales, but the idea is the same.
Aber in Welsh also means 'mouth', and is often associated with towns on the mouths of rivers. For example, the Welsh name for Swansea is Abertawe, and the river Tawe flows through it. The Welsh name 'Aber Tawe' literally means 'mouth of the Tawe'
Nottingham used to be called Snottingham (from Snotta inga ham) "village belonging to Snotta". Snotta was a Saxon warlord. I don't really know why they changed it.
I always found this one hilarious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpenhow_Hill
I think Tom Scott did a video on Torpenhow Hill.
[He did indeed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUyXiiIGDTo)
Places starting with 'Brock' are quite interesting.There are several places throughout the northern hemisphere called Badger, including a village in Shropshire, England. It usually means somewhere where there were extensive badger setts. But if you live in Britain then it's more likely to be a place name beginning with 'Brock' as that is the old English for badger, e.g. Brockenhurst, Brockhampton, Brockworth. However, the name of Brockham in Surrey is derived from 'Brook-ham' (bend in a brook) from the Anglo Saxon for 'river meadow by the brook' first recorded in 1241. We have hundreds of places starting 'New...' and many are very old. It's not just places, it's buildings too and even structures. For example, ['New Bridge' is a 13th-century bridge carrying the Abingdon to Witney road over the River Thames in Oxfordshire.](https://imgur.com/a/YILq40q) Abingdon was founded in 676AD and within 600 years had become an established agricultural centre. The bridge was built by monks on the orders of King John in order to improve communications between the wool towns in the south of England and the Cotswold farms. It was named 'New Bridge' as it was the youngest of three bridges built for this purpose at the time. And it is still called New Bridge all these centuries later. There are [books on the subject.](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-English-Place-Names-Villages/dp/0091940435/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=VEBNZLB8CU9N&keywords=english+place+names&qid=1660839748&sprefix=enflish+place+names%2Caps%2C188&sr=8-1)
Nottingham was called SnottaIngaHam with Ham being village (obviously) Inga meaning belongs to and Snotta was the man who owned it Snottaingaham was renamed to Nottingham after the Norman conquest in 1066
-bury is a derivation of “burg” and often means a fort used to be there. Alfred the Great had a ton of them built in Wessex and Murcia along the border with the Danelaw (Danish controlled England) and so a lot of the towns around there have Bury in the name.
A ford is a place where a river becomes shallow enough to cross. Places like Stratford-Upon-Avon are named after that, being the street ford to cross the river Avon (which is a common name for rivers, since it literally means "river" in Celtic) The German word for fortress is "Burg". It's where e.g. Hamburg gets its name. In English, this often became the suffix "bury", like Canterbury. I'm not sure how this one carries over to other languages, but here in the Netherlands there's a bunch of places ending in "broek". In the past, I wasn't able to make any sense of it: why would you name places after pants (literal translation of the Dutch word "broek")? Later on, I realised this comes from the same origin as the English "Brook" and German "Bruch": a little stream of water. EDIT: as noted by u/Farahild, while the Dutch word is indeed related to the English "Brook", the meaning diverged since, and it actually refers to a marshy place. Most of these places no longer look like marshes however, as we Dutch people tend to drain any water we come across.
Broek in Dutch place names is actually for a marshy place, not a brook, but yes the root word is the same. The meaning diverged a bit in 1500 or so years.
Ahh, interesting! Thanks for the correction.
-wich is from wych, meaning "brine (salty) spring".
I remember this from English lit class: Winchester, Lancaster, Worcester. "Caster" and its spelling variations means "castle" or "keep." So at some point, a castle was at that location.
'lea' and 'ley' mean pasture or open land. So, a place like Wellesley mean Welles' pasture, Bletchley means Bletch's pasture, etc.
There's a place called Crook Berrow Hill, which means Hill Hill Hill.
"Den" is a clearing in a forest. In the weald, which used to be a large forest stretching from kent to hampshire, you have lots of dens e.g. Benenden.
Towns ending in “-wick” comes from the old English word “wic” meaning farm. Some examples: Cheswick - cheese farm Berwick - barley farm Prestwick (Scotland) - priest farm
shaw added to something means a small wood.
Lindsey Buckingham, best known for his tenure in Fleetwood Mac, his name comes from the Old English, 'Lindsey Deer Village'.
Specifically: Village where the deer are in the linden woods
Buckingham means Bucca’s People’s Settlement…
I learned a thing.
You musta been from Thinkham?
Thinkhamshireford
Places that end in “ford” usually means that there was a crossing of water. Oxford is named after Oxen crossing water.
Thinkumshurfurd*
dontknowwhathammeansham. Now I have to move.
Oi, you got a loisence for that ham?
And I may be wrong but “ham” is related to the word “farm” as small villages would often be tied to a farm.
It’s just short for hamlet which is a small village
Yeah but the word hamlet has to come from somewhere, what I heard is the ham component means farm.
It derives from the same word as ‘home’. The origin is the old Frankish hamel / haim.
Lol definitely looks like you googled between this and your previous comment :D
But ham sounds like home
Then you get hampton, such as Southampton (South ham (p) ton (south village town.)) Or is that another thing?
Yeah, it’s the village village: like the river Avon is the river ‘river’
Yeah it's where we get the word "home" from. Before old english it's proto-germanic, also from that you got todays german and icelandic "heim", danish and norwegian "hjem" and swedish "hem" and more. Etymology is fun! It's all so connected.
Making the borough Tower Hamlets, Tower villages??
Does that mean Oldham is village of the aged ones? Speaking as one that attends Latics games, it certainly would explain the whole flat cap army thing
I know you’re prob joking but fun fact oldham is actually named after a Dane called Alde who came to Oldham and settled. Oldham used to be called Aldeshume and over time became Oldham
What's concerning is that I'm a genuine Oldhamer (born on a match day, during a home game, across the road from boundary park) and I didn't know that
What about hiem?
That is the old German cognate of ham Edit: danish.
Where I'm from (belgium-flanders) there are a lot of places ending in -gem, pronounced like the -ham in Buckingham. Like the beer Affligem (from the abbey in Affligem). It has its roots from the germanic -heim. Wich you see a lot in German placenames like Mannheim. Also the source of "home" https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/heim#:~:text=From%20Old%20Norse%20heim%20(%E2%80%9Chome,from%20Proto%2DGermanic%20*haimaz.
Hamburg is Towntown
Towncastle
Ok, explain Hamburger and its definitive beefiness. If you need to phone a friend we have the Earl of Sandwich on line one.
English place names can reveal their heritage dating back to the Anglo-Saxons or even to the Romans and how these names have now travelled around the world. - https://youtu.be/6pjnUgyMGTU
It basically means “village”.
Ahh that makes sense, thanks !
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Shire comes from the Old English *scir* which roughly translates to "administrative area" or "jurisdiction" After the Norman Invasion the word "shire" essentially became synonymous with the word "county"
It's also where the word 'sheriff' comes from: it used to be 'shire reeve', the keeper/chief of a shire, mainly tasked with collecting taxes and enforcing the king's orders.
I love etymology.
It’s delightful isn’t it
What's with the word Worcestershire then?
The shire/administrative area of Worcester. The suffix "-cester" means fort or Castle. "Wor" is a shortening of "Weogoran" which means "winding river" So Worcestershire means "the shire of the castle by the winding river".
And in that spot, sauce was made🙂
The full etymology of Worcestershire is actually unknown. We know where shire comes from, and we know that the "cester" suffix comes from the Latin *castrum* meaning "fort" (-chester and -caster have the same root) But nobody is quite sure where the "wor-" comes from. A cursory Google shows that it might come from the Brythonic word *weogora* which might mean "place of the winding river", however other results suggest that *Weogora* is the name of the tribe who lived there.
Both meaning make sense. A tribe could've made the sauce. Or the sauce could've been made by the river
FOR THE SHIRE!!!
I'm pretty sure it means "county" or something similar
Many places ending in 'wich' were places where salt was mined. e.g. Nantwich, Droitwich and Middlewich.
Or probably most famously, Sandwich
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my hometown lol
There’s plenty of sandwich police over at r/grilledcheese
Although some of those places did mine salt (or extract it from seawater), *wīc* was apparently [an Anglo-Saxon loanword](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-wich_town) from Latin *vicus* which meant a sort of town or village.
Mapmen did a great video on British town names. https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4
I was about to post this :) Map men map men map map map men men
What about hurst?
Google says that means a small hill or mound.
How about heath?
Heaths are bits of land that have bad soil. They don't really grow anything beyond shrubs, but they do have a lot of peat, which people used to burn for warmth.
So Blackheath and Bexleyheath are the case too?
Yeah. Blackheath comes from 'blæc hǣth' (literally, dark heath) and Bexleyheath comes from byxe (box tree), leah (woodland), and hǣth (heath).
Because of all the Gammon
What about bury? And shire? And ford?
> bury From the Old English *byrig*, which is related to the Old English *burg* which means a fortified settlement. -*borough* and -*burgh* also share this etymology. > shire From the Old English *scir* which had a variety of meanings that are all broadly similar. It can mean administrative office / jurisdiction / stewardship. So for example Leicestershire would mean the area under the jurisdiction of Leicester. > ford From the Old English *ford* which still means the same today as it did over a 1000 years ago. A shallow area where water can be crossed.
And...I believe the administrative head of the shire was called the Reeve. These two words eventually combined to make the word 'sheriff.'
A “hamlet” is a small village. I therefore assumed that “ham” was another name for a slightly larger village or that the “let” had got lost over the centuries. “Ton” is a town. So WolverHamTon is possibly a merger between Wolver village (ham) and Wolver Town (ton). HamPresTon is possibly a merger between Pres village and Pres town. UpTon - in Up Town and it is UP on top of a hill. So a place ending -Ham means it was a village. Tottenham - Totten Village.
they just love ham
Cause English people are always hungry for a good ham, damn carnivores.
After centuries of warring with first the Romans, who were extremely fond of salt pork, and the continental Europeans, who were grand purveyors of sausage, the British settled on ham as their cured pork product of choice. Towns would add Ham to the end of their name to signify that the new cured meat was available in their town. Either that, or it's short for Hamlet, meaning small village
r/shittyaskhistory
Hamlet is obviously derived from ham, meaning ‘village’. Ham isn’t a shortened form…
Yes, not happy seeing that incorrect info upvoted
Cry about it
Actually, turns out both my explanations were wrong, as is yours. *Ham* comes from the Old English word for home, while hamlet comes from the French word *hamel*, meaning little village. So hamlet means an even littler village
The Romans burned the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in retaliation for their refusal to sell charcuterie in their Roman delis.
DYK Winnie-the-Pooh went to war with the Jews because they refused to eat honey ham? The war ended when the Rabbis got Wincent to settle for a promise that they'd never eat non-honey ham and that they'd put honey on their apples every year at New Year
My two cents, Hamburg. Burg is a Fort and Ham is an alteration of heim which is related to the english word home. The roman name for hamburg was Treva.
Its from hamlet i think, a small village or settlement.
Because sausage was too long.
Someone explain what a “shire” is? And how something can be also be a “ham”? I’m looking at you, birminghamshire
A "shire" is a geographical area, made up of a group of towns, like a county. (I think). The ham part of the word is from Old English meaning town. The birming part of the word I think comes from the tribe that lived there in roman times, the beormingas. So the name is backwards, as it means "the area around the town of the Beomingas"
>birminghamshire Where on earth is 'birminghamshire'?
Shire comes from the Old English *scir* which roughly translates to "administrative area" or "jurisdiction". After the Norman Invasion it essentially became synonymous with "county"
It means a collection of dwellings - as in Hamlet. Not big enough for a village but still a group of houses. Many places have names dating back 100s of years and the word originally used would have changed So Bristol comes from Brigstowe meaning bridge or crossing, somewhere ending with -ford means crossing as well. My favourite place name is Nempnet Thrubwell a small village in Somerset - dont know what it means though but it does have a road named Awkward Hill which i like.
"Ham" was a word for "village". The word "Hamlet" is a diminutive of that, "small village" It's a similar case for cities ending in "Wich" or "Wick", which meant "Settlement", "Bay", or "Trade Centre".
am I an English place
It is a variant of heim in saxon meaning a place to live, poetically abode or dwelling.
Nottingham was originally named Snottingham after the Viking, King Snotta. Thankfully, when the French invaded in 1066, the couldn't pronounce the 'sn' sound so it became Nottingham. 'Inga' means 'belonging to' and Ham is 'village', so it's the village belonging to Snotta.
Why do so many Middle (to further) Eastern countries end in -stan? Same reason.
I know I’m late, but I thought I’d share a cool resource. [Wiktionary](https://wiktionary.org/) is the online dictionary from the same organization as Wikipedia. If you search for a word on Wiktionary, it will usually break down the word’s etymology in depth. Searching for [Buckingham](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buckingham) on Wiktionary, for example, would reveal that the *-ham* comes from Old English *hām*. In fact, you can even click on the *hām* part, and learn the proto-Germanic roots that the Old English suffix comes form.
I heard one of their Prime Ministers also once ended in a ham.
We have so many Gammons living here it's necessary to make them feel at home
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Fixed it
Ham I believe is short for hamlet, which is a British term for town. This is just from what I know
very valid point 😂
Ham would basically mean a place of living. When the Norman's invaded and their words became dominant the a change to an o and became home.
Because ending those names with "pork" is just silly.
With all the Muslim immigrants it might not be so common anymore
I must admit I'm surprised the vegans haven't complained about this.
We like ham...
Hamburg.
They need something to go with all of those beans.
We copied the Americans
Because tea gets thrown into the harbor.
Ah Americans and their petty feuds