DISCOVERY 



95 



Side by side with such names as these we have others 

 which attempt to show the precise position of places in 

 relation to a river or rivers. The Mittons, Muttons, and 

 Mytons are all on the mythes (a derivative of month) 

 between the meeting of two streams. Twining in 

 Gloucestershire means " Between two streams," and 

 so did Twynehani, the present-day Christchurch. The 

 North Country twistles are all at the twisel or fork of 

 two streams, while Beckermet, Beckermonds, Eamont, 

 and Emmott are all at the " meet " or " moot " of 

 two becks or rivers (Anglo-Saxon ea). 



Names Compounded with "At" 



One curious trick of Old English place-nomenclature, 

 going back to very early times, was the method of 

 speaking of a place, not as " X " but as " At X." In 

 large numbers of charters the regular formula is that 

 the grant is made at the place " which the rustics call 

 'At X.' " One shrewdly suspects that this was by 

 then nothing but a legal formula and that it was the 

 lawyers rather than the rustics who thus called it. 

 The old custom has, however, left its very definite 

 mark in place-names. Dr. Bradley long since pointed 

 out that the many English ri\-er Rees or Reas went 

 back to Middle English at titer ec (= at the river), 

 becommg bv misdivision at the ree. Thurleigh in 

 Bedfordshire, pronounced Thurly with the stress on 

 the last syllable, is a yet more curious instance. Its 

 early forms are variously Leye, Therlye, and Relye. All 

 can be explained from an early at there leye (= at the 

 meadow), alternatively misdivided to at the relye, at 

 therlye, or, with no preposition or article, simply Ley e. 

 The importance of these misdivisions in giving rise to 

 fresh place-name forms is neatlj' showii in a Bucking- 

 hamshire charter which mentions Yttingaford, the scene 

 of the peace between Alfred and Guthrum, and a road 

 called the Theodiveg (i.e. the national road). Mr. 

 Gurney of Egginton has identified these as Tiddingford 

 Hill, where the t of at has got tacked on to the front 

 of the name and The Ede Way, where the initial th has 

 with equal ingenuity been chopped off. 



Descriptive Place-names 



Another very common type of place-name is that 

 whereby the position of a group of settlements is 

 defined in relation to some common centre or in 

 relation to one another. These Nortons, Suttons, 

 Eastons or Astons, and IVestons call for little comment 

 as a rule, though when one or other of the group has 

 dropped out it is often difficult to tell now just why the 

 place is so called. It is noteworthy, however, that the 

 essential vagueness and ambiguity of such names led 

 to curious intensive forms. Side by side with Westons 

 and Astons we have the comparatives Westerton and 

 Asterfon, and even the superlative Westmeston. There 



are three Middletons in Ilderton in Northumberland, 

 and one is commonly distinguished in early times as 

 Midlest or Midelmast Middleton. 



It is clear that our forefathers were a good deal more 

 sensitive than is the average man of to-day to differ- 

 ences of slope and outline. They applied the term 

 cliff to many a slope which to our eyes is but a gentle • 

 rise (e.g. Egglescliffe, co. Durham), and it did not require 

 any very steep gradient for them to call places Hanging 

 Houghton or Hanging Grimston. or to caU a w-ood a 

 Hanger, the source not only of a good many names 

 in -hanger, but also of the many Hunger Hills scattered 

 up and down England, and probably also of the Hungry 

 in Htmgry Bentley and Hungry Sfudley, now Studley 

 Royal. The Anglo-Saxon hoh meant originally " a 

 steep overhanging cliff " (allied to the word hang itself) 

 and is still found in this sense in the North Country 

 heugh, but it is curious to find it, in the form -hoe or 

 -hoo, applied also to the low spurs of land jutting out 

 into the flats of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. 

 This sensitiveness to slight changes of shape has made 

 it at times yevy difficult, as in the case of the very 

 common suffix hale, to determine the precise sense in 

 which certain terms were used. Dr. G. B. Grund\' in 

 his work on Saxon Charters has shown how much may 

 be done in this matter by tracing out the bounds of an 

 estate as given in a charter on the actual ground itself 



Form and Colour in Place-names 



Questions of outline are clearly the cause of many 

 hill-names. Brokenborongh is fairly common as a hill- 

 name, so is Holborough (hoi = hollow). Less obvious 

 are Clannaborough (= cloven hill) and Sadberge, Sed- 

 bergh, Sedboroitgh, and Sedbnry, all of which denote a 

 scai-shaped hill. The suffix in all these cases is 

 originally beorg, " barrow, hill " rather than burh. 

 Hamblcdon, Homildon, Humbleton and the like are fairly 

 common as hill-names in England. They are all 

 hamble-h\[\s in which the first element goes back to an 

 Anglo-Saxon haniel, "mutilated," and they refer to 

 various types of outline, one of the commonest being 

 the rounded or " dodded " hill. Cronkley in Northum- 

 berland and Crunkley in the North Riding both go back 

 to an early crumbeclif descriptive of a hill of crum or 

 " crooked " outlme. 



There has been much discussion as to how far we are 

 justified in carrying this idea of the use of descriptive 

 place-names by our forefathers. In reaction against an 

 earlier unscientific school of place-name interpretation 

 which hunted for the picturesque, quite regardless of 

 scientific truth, there has been an inclination on the 

 part of some scholars to deny it almost entirely, and to 

 try to get round the difficulty of interpretation with the 

 aid of personal names, real or imaginary. Others would 

 confine this type within the narrowest limits, and in 



