England Understanding Place Names - International Institute

Place Names
Place names have a very personal interest for over half of Englishmen, as the surnames they bear were derived from place names. As a general rule in Europe place names are much older than surnames, but many are younger than given names, particularly those places that have a personal name element in them. In North America and the Antipodes the native inhabitants gave the first names to places, many of which were adopted and written down, mainly in English, from their oral languages. Subsequently place names were brought from many lands, often as a memento by settlers from that area, and some were chosen to honour pioneer personalities and events. As in the European context, then, name origins give a clue to those who passed that way or to those who stayed, even though the settlement pattern is more recent than that in Europe.

There are several good topographical dictionaries of the British Isles, perhaps Bartholomew’s Gazetteer of the British Isles and Room’s A Concise Dictionary of Modern Place-Names in Great Britain and Ireland are the best ones most widely available. England is covered by Lewis’ A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) and Wilson’s The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1879), Wales by Lewis (A Topographical Dictionary of Wales, 1833), Richards (Welsh Administrative and Territorial Units: Mediaeval and Modern, 1969) and Wilson (The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1879). For Ireland consult Flanagan and Flanagan’s Irish Place Names, Fullerton’s The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland (1844), Lewis’ A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) and Thom’s General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns of Ireland and The Alphabetical Index to the Towns and Townlands of Ireland. (1861 and 1877). The best for Scotland are Findlay’s Directory to Gentlemen’s Seats, Villages etc. in Scotland Giving the Counties in Which They are Situated, the Post Towns to Which Each is Attached, and the Name of theResident, Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical,Biographical and Historical, Lewis’ A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland(1846), and Wilson’s The Gazetteer of Scotland''(1882). ''

Meanings of place names in Ireland can be found in the books by Joyce (Irish Local Names Explained), and in Flanagan and Flanagan (Irish Place Names), and there is a chapter in Meally (Encyclopaedia of 'Ireland). For Scotland first consult Dorward’s Scotland’s Place-names, and B.L. Jones’ Place Names in Welsh Family History:A Guide to Research has a good chapter on Welsh place names meanings; both of these books have small bibliographies of further sources. Dictionaries of place names have been compiled for most states and provinces, an example being Holmgren and Holmgren’s Over 2000 PlaceNames of Alberta for Alberta, and are well worth delving into in pursuit of an area’s history.

Jurisdictional Names in Genealogy
Many modern English administrative units have the same boundaries as they had in the 9th and 10th centuries (Gelling 1988). The ecclesiastical parishes, for example, often correspond very closely to the pre-conquest land units shown in the boundary surveys in Anglo-Saxon charters. Furthermore, since they have survived the major upheavals of over 1100 years it seems reasonable that these boundaries may already have been ancient when they were first written down by the Anglo-Saxons. Thus some may be attributed to Romano-British or even prehistoric time periods.

It is true that the settlements within the boundaries may have shifted geographically but the boundaries have tended to remain constant. They were, after all, part of an interlocking jigsaw pattern of other units, each one capable of providing the necessities of life for a village community.

Nowadays we may be puzzled by the peculiar irregular shapes of many parishes, many of them having outliers in the form of separate portions of land unconnected to the main parish unit. These are explicable by the need for each community to have a share of the different types of land and soil for farming, grazing, and provision of wood as well as a well-drained nucleus for the dwellings.

Recent research shows that these agriculturally viable units were developed from prehistoric times, each using natural pre-existing hills, trees, stones, or man-made points such as earthworks, buildings or tracks, for their boundaries. The Anglo-Saxon charters recording the grants of land to noblemen or religious houses did not establish the boundaries, but recorded those that were already there, forming them into estates over which the manorial owner had certain rights.

As the population grew, new portions of land were brought into use, and these can often be identified by the fact that some of their boundaries follow more recently acquired landmarks, such as Roman roads or more recent buildings. Population density may have caused a former pre-Conquest estate to now comprise four or more modern parishes.

Names Ancient and Modern
Over the centuries names have been given to all kinds of special areas of land, not just counties and parishes. Many are ancient names that are still used colloquially and often appear in print. Many of these areas overlap as they have received different names for different reasons, and a few of the larger ones for England and Wales are listed here. A good gazetteer for the area should be consulted for any unfamiliar area or place name.


 * The Black Country is the industrial, formerly highly atmospherically polluted, area centred on the town of Dudley and including parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Shropshire.


 * The Borders is the boundary and adjoining districts between England and Scotland.


 * The Broads are large pieces of fresh water in East Anglia formed by widening of rivers, much used for sailing.


 * The Cheviot Hills (Cheviots) are a mountain range along the border of England and Scotland.


 * The Chilterns are a range of chalk hills extending north east from the River Thames in south Oxfordshire to Suffolk.


 * The Cotswolds are a range of hills in East Gloucestershire with picturesque villages.


 * The Dales is a group of valleys in the northern Pennines with much moorland and fast flowing rivers, and covers parts of Yorkshire, Durham, Westmorland and Northumberland.


 * Dartmoor is an immense granite upland tract in south Devon noted for its wildness and remoteness.


 * East Anglia was originally the Saxon kingdom of eastern counties in the ‘bulge’ north of the Thames and south of the large estuary called The Wash. It includes the old North Folk (Norfolk), and South Folk (Suffolk), Essex and some people include Cambridgeshire here as well.


 * Exmoor is a large, predominantly wild tract of moorland mostly in Somerset but partly in north Devon.


 * The Fens are the low lying, alkaline area of eastern England, much of which was drained under Dutch direction, and is very fertile. The area comprises almost all of Cambridgeshire, all of Huntingdonshire, and parts of Bedfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.


 * The Fylde is the peninsula in central, west Lancashire north of the River Ribble.


 * The Gower is a peninsula in west Glamorgan colonized by Flemings.


 * Hallamshire was the ancient lordship in south Yorkshire (West Riding) which covered what is now Sheffield and Ecclesfield.


 * The Home Counties are those surrounding London: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Middlesex and Surrey.


 * Isle of Axholme is a flat, formerly marshy tract in extreme north western Lincolnshire encircled by four rivers.


 * Isle of Dogs is the part of south east Middlesex formed by a bend of the River Thames and cut across by the docks. It now houses the Canary Wharf development


 * Isle of Ely is the northern part of Cambridgeshire which is an island surrounded by fens.


 * Isle of Man is a semi-autonomous state in the Irish Sea.


 * Isle of Sheppey is part of north Kent cut off by rivers.


 * Isle of Thanet is part of north Kent cut off by rivers.


 * Isle of Wight was, until 1974, part of Hampshire and is off the coast of south central England.


 * The Lake District (The Lakes) includes portions of Cumberland, Westmorland and north Lancashire with dramatic scenery.


 * Little England Beyond Wales refers to Pembrokeshire because of its historical association.


 * London can mean anything from the City of London, (all one square mile and 120 parishes of it), to the vast megalopolis of 900 square miles in existence in the 21st century. The official boundaries of Greater London have been extended, notably in 1888 and 1964, to encompass more and more of the counties of Middlesex, Essex, and Hertfordshire (north of the Thames), and Kent and Surrey (south of the Thames).


 * The Midlands comprises the several middle counties of England, roughly based on Birmingham.


 * The Peak District is the very picturesque high moorland part of the southern Pennines, mainly in Derbyshire but extending into Staffordshire and Lancashire.


 * The Pennines are a range of mountains in north England extending from the midlands to the border with Scotland.


 * The Potteries is a district in north Staffordshire renowned for earthenware manufacture.


 * The Shires is the band of counties whose names end in -shire extending north east from Hampshire and Devonshire to Leicestershire, Rutlandshire and Northamptonshire. It is a loose term for the midland counties, and for the fox hunting district.


 * Soke of Peterborough was the north eastern part of Northamptonshire


 * Suffolk has been split into East Suffolk and West Suffolk.


 * Sussex has been split into East Sussex and West Sussex.


 * The Valleys is a term used in Wales to indicate the southern coal mining areas.


 * The Weald is the heavy clay but fertile area between the North and South Downs (chalk hills) mainly in Kent, Sussex and Surrey, and once heavily forested.


 * The (Welsh) Marches are the English counties bordering Wales, namely (from north to south) Cheshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and Monmouthshire (now in Wales).


 * Wessex, the kingdom of the West Saxons (Wesseaxe) established by 495 AD by Germanic invaders who came after the Romans left, and including Berkshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire. The name was re-used by Thomas Hardy in his novels but for the eastern part based largely on Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire.


 * The West Country refers to the south west of England comprising Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, largely agricultural and popular holiday areas. Some would include Hampshire and/or Gloucestershire.


 * The Wirral is the Cheshire peninsula lying south of the Mersey and Liverpool.

For the record, in Britain one never talks about a county using the word county after the name, as is the custom in North America. With one exception in England, County Durham, as well as all Irish counties, neither does one use the word county before the name. Thus Kent is referred to as Kent, or sometimes The County of Kent, but never as Kent County or County Kent. North Americans will receive more sympathy with research requests if they ensure that they use the terminology correctly!

Genealogists also have to cope with the difference in the number of jurisdictional levels in different countries. In North America a town is typically in a county, which is part of a province or state, of which several comprise the country. Thus, the town of Stony Plain is in the county of Parkland, and province of Alberta, Canada. In Europe there is typically only one level in between town and country. Thus, Sevenoaks is in the county of Kent, England. When one specifies a particular parish in a town one therefore needs four computer fields for Europe, but five for North America. As an example of the changes in area names over time, Scotland can be studied profitably. Since ancient times there have been four major groups of names for the counties and other divisions of the kingdom, as outlined below. Histories and even modern newspapers will mention the older names, which may have disappeared from maps but still form part of the regional culture.

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course English - Understanding Names in Genealogy offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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