More Words!

Well, moving certainly does throw off blog writing, does it not? But let me tell you of a few interesting things about English before the move. We move next week, so it may be another couple of weeks before I start writing normally, but I shall return!! (Though not to the Philippines, as some may suspect. (yes, I know that is a fragment.))

I have recently become enthralled with British place names and the fact that they almost always mean something. In America, developers just throw down names for their subdivision streets around some randomly chosen theme. If the theme is Woodland Parke, then we could have Chestnut Grove Lane, Oakhurst Drive, Ashford Down Avenue, and the like, and it means nothing at all. Just random names. In England, however, since people have been here for quite some time, the names of places mean something. So for instance, Oxford is where the water was shallow enough for the oxen to ford the river (the Thames that is, I think - there are three rivers here: Thames, Isis, and Cherwell). So here are some interesting things about British place names and a basic key. First let me list out some of the most common prefixes and suffixes.

-ham: this means farm or homestead
-don: hill
-ton: town
-ing: the people of, kin of, (from OE ingas)

So if you see -ingham that normally means, the home of (someone's) kin. Birmingham, then, might be the place where someone named Birm or Beorma or something similar had their farm and lands. Wallingford, where some friends of ours live, would be the place where Wealh (this time I know the proper Old English name) and his folks had a ford. It's all quite wonderful really. But sometimes there are tricks. For instance, most every name that sounds like Wickum in England comes from OE wicham, which means something about someone's village. However, there is one High Wycombe that did not fit that pattern in the old surveys. Some suggest it has an obscure root, I personally think the simplest answer is often right, and the simple answer is that there is a river Wye (not the main Wye in western England) that flows near there, and a combe is a valley. So the city was likely founded above the valley through which the Wye flowed. But that one is still out for debate.

That is just a small selection, but there are some other types of names that are comical. You see, when the different invaders (Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, etc) came through and named things as they conquered, they often took the names already given by the locals (the Celtic peoples). But there was much confusion. So where as the word Avon mean "river" in Celtic, the folks coming after thought the Celts were referring to the specific river, so now we have the River Avon, that is, the River river. Or in Leicestershire we have Breedon on the Hill, literally meaning, Hill Hill on the Hill (Bree is OE for hill, don is Celtic for the same). Or Brill, from Bree-hill, again, Hill hill.

Good times.

Anyway, I just wanted to post something since it had been so long. But there is much more where this came from, and perhaps I will post more like it later.

Toodle pip!