Transcript for:
Origin of English City Names

Right! The origin of every English city’s name. There are 55 of them… That’s quite a lot. So let’s get cracking.  Welcome to another RobWords. First some quick context: England’s place  names are a product of England’s history. They’ve been influenced by - in order -the  Celtic Britons who were around from the Iron Age,   the Romans who spent a few centuries there,  the Anglo Saxons who came after them,   the Vikings who took control of a massive chunk of  England, and then William the Conqueror’s Normans. Throw in some Christianity and a  millennium of lazy pronunciation   and mishearings and you get to  the place names we have today. Now we’re just going to look at the cities,  because we would be here all day otherwise. Contrary to popular belief, there are no   specific criteria for a place in  England to be designated a city. It’s just at some point the monarch  has to have decided that it is. None of this “it has to have a  cathedral or a university” nonsense. That’s why they’re of all shapes and sizes. So with which city do we start? Well  how about with the City of London? Because, not only is London our nation’s capital,   but it is also potentially one of the oldest -  and most mysterious - place names that we have. The earliest known name for London is  what the Romans called it: Londinium,   but we have no idea what that  means, or where it came from. The Romans liked to adapt the existing names  of places, rather than come up with new ones. But historians haven’t been able  to make any Celtic words fit. Could it be from this meaning marsh with a fort? Nope. There’s no evidence of a fort. Could it be from this  meaning “fast flowing river”? Maybe but it’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it? So historians think the name could  come from even before the Celts,   from a language we know nothing about. Wow. That’s great, but now I need to give  you one we can explain now, don’t I? So let’s go with the presidential  sounding Lincoln, a city whose   cathedral was once the tallest  structure in the entire world. Its name is a Celtic-Roman hybrid. The  Celts named it Lindon - no relation   of London - using their word for pool,  and the Romans called in Lindum Colonia   after they built a colonia there -  a retirement village for soldiers. Through a few centuries of laziness and  mumbling, you get from that to Lincoln. One of the theories behind how Colchester got   its name is from one of those Roman  colonia stuffed with ex-legionaries. It looks like it’s named after the River Colne,  which in turn might be named after a colonia. But some historians reckon  Colne is actually Celtic,   because it pops up in other names  in other parts of the country. Now, the -chester in Colchester  is the bit we really have to talk   about because the story behind it is surprisingly… surprising. At first glance, it seems simple. The  Romans built a fort there and their   word for a fortification was castrum, so  they slammed that on the end of the name. Easy. But nope. Yes, the chester comes from the Latin for  fort, but the Romans did not put it there. It was the Anglo-Saxons who put  the chester in Colchester to say: “Hey that’s where the Romans were!” And the same goes for every -chester,  -caster and -cester in the country. So let’s tick off some cities. You’ve got Chichester, which is probably  named after an Anglo-Saxon called Cissa. Winchester, with the Win thought to come from a   Celtic word for a meeting place  pronounced wenta by the Romans. Manchester is potentially named after  a breast-shaped hill - meaning it’s   related to the words mammal  and mama, rather than man. The Romans called it Mancunium, hence  the locals are still called Mancunians. And then there’s Chester,  which is frankly just cheating. It was a Roman fort like the rest of them but   has resisted attempts to differentiate  it with something extra at the start. The names Legechester - “legion chester” 

  • and Westchester failed to stick. Etymologically identical to the -chesters are  the -casters. Lancaster was the fort by the   River Lune, in turn thought to come  from a word meaning healthy or pure. Doncaster is at the River Don. Don  is just a Celtic word for river,   so it’s literally the River River. As are the various River Avons 
  • also Celtic - and RIver Ouses. Exeter is another “caster” on a river,   which used to be this mouthful before it  was passed through the laziness filter. It’s named after the River Exe, which  again, probably means River River. Specifically a river replete with fish. More on rivers to come - and also bridges,  because there’s a lot of crossover. Pun intended. But first the final Roman forts: the -cesters,   not a single one of which is  pronounced like it’s spelt. We do it to confuse tourists. Cirencester stays true to its roots, but  it is not a city, so we’re not interested. But we are interested in Leicester:   It’s named after a Celtic tribe and to  the Anglo Saxons was Ligera Ceastre. You can actually see a version  of that on this super old map. But bit by bit we shed those tiresome  syllables - in pronunciation anyway. Speech didn’t match spelling because,  you know, most people couldn’t read. To the West, saucy little Worcester  is named after the Weogora tribe. And the southern city of  Gloucester was the fort at Glev,   thought to maybe come from a Celtic word for glow. So with all those cesters, casters and chesters,   the Anglo-Saxons gave a nod to  the Romans who’d come before them. But almost everywhere else they named or  renamed using their own language, Old English. And they’re responsible for the vast  majority of the place names we have today. Among them, Norwich, which is the north wic,   wic being an Anglo-Saxon word  for a settlement or village. It gives us the -wick place names too. The northernness of Norwich is likely in  comparison to their fellow East Anglians   down in Ipswich, which isn’t a city  and I bet they’re annoyed about it. East Anglia is of course so called  because the Angles were there. Another Anglo-Saxon pairing are  Northampton and Southampton,   but this time it is the southern  settlement that is actually a city. Southampton was originally actually another  -wich. But it changed from hammwic to hamtun. In this case, the hamm bit comes  from the Old English for an   enclosure - probably the same root as when  we say something is “hemmed” in, in fact. We’ll talk about a different  Anglo-Saxon ham a bit later. But anyway, the ton or tun  refers to a farmstead or village. Eventually it becomes our word “town”. Up in West Yorkshire, Wakefield  shows off another Anglo-Saxon suffix. Field meant… well have a guess. Yes, field. And a wake was a kind of medieval village  festival, so despite sounding somewhat funereal,   Wakefield is actually a fun,  festive name related to fairs. Another city with an Anglo-Saxon  name is Stoke-on-Trent. The River Trent is referenced to  differentiate it from various other Stokes. Stoke coming from the Old English  for outlying farm or settlement. The same word also gives us  the place name-ending -stock. Now, I’ve shown you lots of maps during this  video, but here’s one more - a very important one. It is the electoral map of the  UK following this month’s general   election, where large parts of the country  turned red as Labour won a historic majority. But now they’re in power, getting an unbiased  view of how the government is doing can be tricky. Take this story, for example, on Labour’s decision   to release offenders early to  reduce prison overcrowding. There are nearly fifty outlets  reporting on it from all over the world,   but you can see that the language they  use varies, with for example left-wing   outlets stressing it’ll prevent the  “collapse” of the prison service. Meanwhile, right-wing media emphasize that   “thousands of criminals” will be  released early onto the streets. Now here on my channel, we delve  into language and its history to   understand how words and context shape meaning. And Ground News does something  similar with headlines,   allowing us to see different  perspectives on the same story. Ground News is an app and website  that compiles news articles globally,   providing additional context to  help you make informed decisions. I’ve partnered with Ground News a few  times because I believe in what they do. And in a crucial election year like  this, it has never been more important. I get to follow news most important to me like  the UK so I know what's going on back at home. Plus, with the Vantage plan I use,  you get access to the Blindspot Feed,   showing you stories that  are under or over-reported. That way, you won’t miss a thing. See through the headlines and stay fully informed. Go to Ground.news/robwords  or just use this QR code to   get 40% off unlimited access to Ground News. Now I said we’d cross this bridge when we  got to it, and that’s the bridge bridge. Because Cambridge is so called because  there was a river crossing there. It was originally called Grantabrycge  because it was on the River Granta,   however it appears that the Normans struggled to  pronounce that with their fancy French mouths,   so it morphed into Cam-bridge or Cambridge. And then, rather ridiculously, the  name of the river was changed to fit. So the river running through  Cambridge is now called the Cam. Although at some other points  it is still the Granta. Cambridge’s university rivals in Oxford can  also pin their place name on a passing river. Ford is a really common Anglo-Saxon  suffix meaning, well, ford. It’s a place you can get across a river  because, often because it’s shallow enough. Oxford is where you could  easily lead oxen over the river. Near the Welsh border, Hereford means “place where  an army can cross”, this time over the River Wye. Then across in Essex - so called   because it was the eastern kingdom  of the Saxons - you find Chelmsford. It’s thought to be named  after a fella called Ceolmaer,   who also gave his name to the River  Chelmer, which you can ford there. And then, back in Yorkshire,  Bradford simply means broad ford. There’s one more ford city  left, and that’s Salford. The sal bit comes from the sallow  trees that were in abundance there. They are a type of willow, and also  immortalised in the names Sale,   Sellafield and Selborne, among others. Salford ain’t the only city  to be named after a tree. The tree at the end of  Coventry means just that: tree. It’s reckoned the rest of the name  comes from whoever owned that tree.   One theory is that it was a Saxon called Cofa. And another tree has taken root in the name  of Lichfield. In fact not just one, but many. The Old Celtic name meant grey wood.   The Saxons added the -field to make it  “field of the grey wood” or “grey trees”. Another notable field is Sheffield:  the field next to the River Sheaf. Sheaf itself means to divide  or separate - for example to   be a-sceáf in Old English was to be expelled. The river acted as a boundary between territories. Yorkshire’s rivers feature heavily  in its place names, actually. We already heard about Doncaster’s Don,  into which the Sheaf runs incidentally. But also, the name of Leeds flows from  the River Aire, albeit indirectly. Its Celtic name - Landensis - meant  people of the fast-flowing river. By the time Anglo-Saxon monk the Venerable  Bede was taking notes, it’d become Loidis. And Kingston-upon-Hull,  commonly known as just Hull,   is named after the river there,  which is called the Hull: either from the Celtic for  “muddy” which it flippin’ is,   or the Old Norse for “deep”  which it presumably also is. Old Norse is the language of the Vikings,  by the way. Plenty more on them to come. The Kingston bit of Kingston-upon-Hull  literally means king’s place or king’s estate. The King in question is Edward  I, who according to legend was   chasing a hare in the area one  day, and fell in love with it. The area, not the hare. So he had it for his own. The area not the hare. And the tiny, tiny North Yorkshire city of Ripon  perhaps also gets its name from the nearby waters. Its earliest recorded name is Inhrypum but  no one knows precisely what that meant. One theory is that it means “at  the river bank” and that’s backed   up by its location near where two rivers meet. But I’m actually more convinced by the theory it’s  named for the Hrype, who were an Anglian tribe. Now, arguably England’s worst watery place name   belongs to the similarly small city  of Ely, which means “eel island”. Yes, Ely is thought to get its  name from the fact it's a bit eely. And on the south coast, Portsmouth is so called  because it had a port at the mouth of a river. Although a famous old document called the  Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims Portesmūða was   actually named after a Saxon called Port, which  is a slightly less boring explanation, I suppose. And the equally mouthy Plymouth  sits at the mouth of the River Plym. Plym perhaps simply comes  from the Anglo-Saxon for plum,   so I could have mentioned this  one in the tree section too. Another watery one - perhaps the wettest of  them all - is of course the city of Bath, which is named after the  Roman baths that were there. The Romans called it Aquae  Sulis, meaning Waters of Sulis. Apparently Sulis was a local  goddess of water and healing. The Anglo-Saxons simplified things  by just calling it Bathan or Baths. The nearby cathedral city of Wells has a  similarly literal, liquid-related name. Its Old English name Wella referred to the  three wells dedicated to St Andrew there. Now, while we’re in the vicinity we should bring  up Bristol whose name is something water-adjacent. Quite literally: it’s thought to  mean assembly place at the bridge. At one point it was Bridge-stow. However the theory is that the name changed  because of a quirk of the local accent. Supposedly folk in the area had a  habit of pronouncing Ws as Ls - a   bit like some people now say giw instead  of girl, or bottew instead of bottle. Now Bridgestow really did have a W at  the end, but it’s thought that fancy   folk keen not to seem ignorant may  have over-corrected that W into a L,   even though it was never meant  to be an L in the first place. Thus, with a bit of laziness  thrown in around the middle,   you get from Bridgestow to Bristol. Although,  I think locals kind of do pronounce it Bristow. One last wet one is way up in Liverpool,  which is actually a comparatively new name. It was first recorded in the 12th  century, so after the Norman Conquest. The pool bit is thought to refer to a muddy  tidal creek that perhaps no longer exists there. And the liver? Well, maybe  it was shaped like a liver? Ach. Sorry. I don’t know, actually. I couldn’t find a good explanation for that one. Yap. Now, before we get onto the Viking and Norman   nomenclature - Norman-clature - we need  to sweep up some more Anglo-Saxon stuff because there’s a really common  place name suffix - or group of   suffixes - that we haven’t talked about yet. You see, when the Angles and Saxons felt one  of their territories was under threat - usually   from the Vikings I just mentioned - they  would build their own little fortifications. Fortifications that they called burhs. And the locations of these forts are preserved in   the place names ending -burgh  -borough, -brough, and -bury. The city of Canterbury was the burh of the  Cantii, what the Romans called the people of Kent. Although the twist in the Canterbury  tale is that it was the Jutes who   built the fortification there,  not the Angles, nor the Saxons. Although the term Anglo-Saxon actually refers  to all three groups. And more, in fact. Salisbury played host to another Anglo-Saxon burh. The Salis bit though - that we now so   apathetically pronounce -  is something of a mystery. It’s thought to potentially have  the same root as the Sarum in the   name of the astonishing nearby  historical site of Old Sarum. Indeed at one point Salisbury  was called New Sarum. But where that Sarum comes from… nobody knows. Another city that’s thoroughly  boroughly is Peterborough. In fact, the locals for a time just called it   borough but eventually realised  that wasn’t specific enough. So they extended it to Peterborough in honour of   the monastery around which the  protective walls had been built. A monastery dedicated to none other than St Peter. Once the Anglo-Saxons left behind  their colourful pantheon of Pagan gods,   and converted to Christianity, they  took to their new faith with gusto. And the Peter in Peterborough is just one   holy hint at that. Another one  is in the name of St Albans. It’s named after the very first British saint,   St Alban, who was martyred there, in  what the Romans had named Verulamium. He was executed in the 3rd or 4th  century for becoming a Christian, a conversion that the Romans would not that long  after rather hypocritically make themselves. The City of Westminster also has  obvious ecclesiastical links. The minster in question is the  abbey that remains there today. The West part may well have been to  contrast it with St Paul’s to the East. But hiding its holy history just a little  bit better is the Lancashire city of Preston. You’ll recognise the -ton bit,  the Anglo-Saxon settlement suffix,   but Preston is specifically thought to be  the settlement of the priest or priests. An abbey was set up there by St Wilfrid. Right, we’re making some  amazing progress, aren’t we? Let’s keep going. The priests of Preston weren’t the only  people to get a place named after them. In fact, the Anglo-Saxons  made a bit of a habit of it. Birmingham is named after a fella called  Beorma. That’s where the Birm bit comes from. The ing bit is an Anglo-Saxon element  meaning “the people of” and the ham also from Old English, an ancestor  of our word home, means homestead. So Birmingham means homestead  of the people of Beorma. It was the home of Beorma’s tribe, the Beormingas. Also in the West Midlands, Wolverhampton  has nothing to do with wolves. It’s thought to be named  after a lady called Wulfrun,   who was granted the land by Ethelred the Unready. If so, that makes it the only  English city named after a woman. Although there is a theory  that Ely is named after the   famously female St Æthelthryth, rather than eels. Let’s hope it is. Anyway, Wulfrun’s new land included a place called  Hēantūn, meaning something like “high farm”. Her name plus that gave Wulfrūnehēantūn, which in  the thousand years since has become Wolverhampton. Back down on the South Coast, the city of  Brighton and Hove needs to be taken in two parts. The Brighton bit was originally  Beorhthelm’s tún, or Beorhthelm’s   farm. Beorhthelm is thought to have been a  person, perhaps named for his “bright helmet”. The much longer name, Brighthelmstone was in  use until as recently as the 19th century. The Hove bit of Brighton and Hove is,  I’m afraid, yet another mysterious one. It’s perhaps from the Old English   “hofe” meaning courtyard - the  German Hof means the same thing now. Okay, hold onto your feathered hats,  because we’re off to Nottingham next,   where I suspect the tales of Robin Hood would have   been somewhat less romantic had they  gone with the city’s original name. Nottingham hasn’t always been  Nottingham. It used to be “Snottingham”. That’s right, it was named after a  fella called Snot and specifically   means the homestead of the followers  of Snot - there’s that “ing” again. These are Snot’s people. It’s a city of snot. Snotty, snotty Nottingham. It perhaps isn’t the association with   nasal discharge though that  meant Snottingham lost its S. More likely the Normans just  struggled with saying the sn sound. And lucky for the city that they did. Okay: it’s Viking time. Because while we’re in Nottingham we’re in one  of the so called “five boroughs” of the Danelaw the massive chunk of England that the Norse  invaders seized from the Anglo Saxons. To this day you can see where the Vikings were  just by looking at the names of the places. Close to Nottingham is the city of Derby,   another of the five boroughs, and  more prestigiously, my hometown, which we used to spell it in a way that  actually fits with how British people say it. The -by in Derby is a classic Scandinavian suffix. It’s a fairly generic one meaning anything  from farm, to settlement, to village. So let’s just say place. And in Derby’s case it means place of the deer. It replaced the Anglo-Saxon  Northworthy, which I rather like,   but anyway other Viking -by places  include Whitby, Grimsby and Selby. However, Derby is the only one to  have achieved city status so far. As important as Derby and  Nottingham were to the Danes,   they were nothing compared to  their beloved capital of York, the development of the name of  which has been satisfyingly organic. The Celts called it something  along the lines of Eburus,   which the Romans adapted  into their name, Eboracum. Both meant “place of the yew tree”. However, when the Anglo-Saxons came to adapt that,   they got their translation a little bit wrong  and called it Eoforwic: place of the wild boar. The Vikings put their spin on  that and called the place Jorvik. But after they left, the  locals struggled with that V. To the people who remained a V was the same as   a U so they likely pronounced  it along the lines of Yoruik. And from there, you basically are already at York. Now further north Durham  wasn’t actually in the Danelaw,   but it appears to have been close enough  for Old Norse to have influenced the name. It used to be called Dunelm or Dunholm, a  hybrid name combining the Anglo-Saxon for hill,   dũn, and the Scandinavian word, holme,  meaning island or sticky-out-bit-of-land. It reflects the fact it’s on a hill almost  completely surrounded by the River Wear. Over the centuries the “ham” became  anglicised and the name morphed into Durham. While we’re on the Wear, let’s follow it up to  Sunderland, a city with an unusual story to tell. So you know how if we say something’s been “ripped   asunder” we’re saying that it has  been detached from something else? Well that idea gives Sunderland its name too.   It is “land” that has been in some  way “sundered” from somewhere else. The leading theory is that it refers to  the fact the land was granted to a group   of monks living on the opposite side of the  river, hence the Wear sundered it from them. I really like that one. Now let’s take the short trip to Newcastle  where the name requires rather less explaining. It means new castle. It’s finally time for the  promised Norman nomenclature the Norman-clature because William the Conqueror’s  lot bloody loved a castle. They couldn’t get enough of them. Did you know there wasn’t a single castle  in England before the Normans turned up? But after they arrived they put them anywhere and   everywhere where that they  felt a little bit unsafe. The castle in Newcastle was probably  new in comparison with the castles the   Normans had already built in Durham, York and  Richmond to protect against Scottish invaders. The Normans actually didn’t generally meddle  all thatt much with England’s place names. But on a few occasions they added to them  to show off that they were now in charge. For example, the town of Ashby de la Zouch was   just called Ashby until the  Zuche family took control. And Leighton Buzzard was so  called by the Busard family. But there’s only one current city that the Normans  renamed in that way, and it is Milton Keynes. Now, there’s a bit of a joke - although I think   some people think it’s true - that the  place is named after a pair of Johns: the poet John Milton and the  economist John Maynard Keynes. But that isn’t the case. The Milton bit is a simple  bit of Anglo-Saxon. It is   a shortening of Middleton meaning middle village. All Suttons mean southern village and all Nortons mean northern village. A nyway the Keynes bit comes from the Cahaignes  family who came over with our friend Willy the C. Wow, just three more cities to sweep up. The ones I didn’t know where else to put. Okay, first: Southend-on-Sea, whose  simplicity is surely its strength. The   original settlement was at the south  end of a village called Prittlewell and it sits on the sea. At the other extreme of England is Carlisle,  whose name is perhaps a Roman-Celtic hybrid. It’s thought to mean fort of Lug,  who was a Celtic god of skills. The Romans called it Luguvalium. But after they left,   the locals translated it back into their local 
  • sadly extinct - form of Celtic, Cumbric in which it was Caer Luel. And thence Carlisle. Our final city name comes from another  Celtic stronghold, way down in Cornwall. It is the tricky-to-decipher Truro. This name might come from the Cornish - another  Celtic language - tri-veru, meaning three rivers. But maybe not. It might be from another lost term meaning  place of turbulent waters. We don’t know. The mystery remains. The Celtic languages have so much  more to offer in terms of place names. That is why I have limited  this video to just England. Wales and Scotland have their own stories to tell. But if you have enjoyed this video,   I’ve posted some extra stuff about  English place names on my Patreon here. And I think you’d enjoy this video as well. Thanks to Ground News - check them out  too - and thanks to you for watching. I’ll see you in the next thing. Cheerio. Nyäää.