What's in a Name?
Place Names : Topographic Names
Topographic names form a very large and diverse group. They consisted originally
of a description of some topographical or physical feature, either natural or
man-made, which was then transferred to the settlement near the feature named,
probably at a very early date. Thus names for rivers and streams, springs and
lakes, fords and roads, marshes and moors, hills and valleys, woods and clearings,
and various other landscape features became the names of inhabited places. Typical
examples of the type are Sherborne, Fulbrook (in Oxfordshire, which was noted
as Fulebroc in Domesday Book, meaning 'Foul or Dirty Brook' from the
Old English fūl + brōc), Bakewell, Tranmere, Oxford, Breamore,
Stodmarsh, Swindon, Goodwood, Bromsgrove, Bexley, and Hatfield – all have second
elements that originally denoted topographical features. Indeed our early ancestors
made use of a vast topographical vocabulary, applied with precision and subtlety
in any one period or locality to the natural and artificial features they depended
upon for their subsistence and survival.
However, the meanings of topographical terms can vary a good deal from name
to name, for some elements used over a long period in the formation of English
place-names underwent considerable changes of meaning during medieval times,
for instance Old English feld originally ‘open land’ developed a later
sense ‘enclosed plot’, Old English wald ‘forest’ came to mean ‘open upland’,
and Old English ēah wood’ became ‘woodland clearing’ and then ‘meadow’.
The choice of the most likely meaning for one of these elements in an individual
name is therefore a matter of judgement based among other things on locality,
the nature of the compound, and assumptions about the age of the name. Moreover
recent research has increasingly shown that what seem to be similar terms for
hills or valleys, woodland or marshland, or agricultural land, had fine distinctions
of meaning in early times. For instance the different Old English terms for
‘hill’ like dūn, hyll, hrycg, hōh, hēafod,
and *ofer, far from being synonyms, seem to have had their own specialized
meanings. In addition these and other common topographical elements like ēg
‘island’, hamm ‘enclosure’, and halh ‘nook’ were each capable
of a wide range of extended meanings according to date, region, and the character
of the landscape itself. Indeed the meanings suggested for names containing
these elements can often be checked and refined by those with a close knowledge
of the local topography of the places in question.
Folk Names
Habitative Names
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