
Spending a deal of time ‘on the road’ this week, I was reminded how my Toponymy knowledge from a by-gone university era had eluded me. Attempting to re-educate myself and to add more pazazz to fieldwork-related travelling, I have dusted off my old notes and looked again into meanings behind names of places where us reseachers (and the like) spend time on our travels. Hopefully, yours will become more illuminated as a result.
Three good major 'toponyms' to start with are:
Manchester from ‘Mamm’ meaning ‘breast-like hill’ and ‘ceaster’ meaning ‘Roman town’
Birmingham: Split into three parts: 'Beormund' as a name, 'ingas' as 'people,' and 'ham' as 'farm/homestead’ i.e. Beormund's people’s farm
London: "place belonging to a man named Londinos," a supposed Celtic personal name meaning "the wild one,"
And here is a light sprinkling of suffixes that should help decode other place-name meanings:
Borough/Bury (a fort of fortified place); By (village); Caster, Chester, Cester (Roman fort or town); Den (pasture for pigs); Don (hill); Ea/ey (island or promontory); Ham (village or estate); Holt (wood); Hurst (Meant a wooded hill); Ing (the people of somewhere); Mere (meant a pond); Stoke (hamlet or little settlement dependent on a nearby, larger settlement); Ton (farm or hamlet); Wick (vicinity, trading place, specialised farm e.g. Gatwick was a goat farm, Chiswick a cheese farm); Worth (enclosure or an enclosed settlement enclosed by a wall of wooden stakes).
Although, scratching the toponymical surface, may your travels now be more curious and less cryptic.
Simon