90 The Names of Places in Wiltshire. 



... 



of his, the village derived its name. Again, Elston, a tithing ini 

 the parish of Orcheston St. George, belonged, at the time oi! 

 Domesday, to Osbern Giffard (W. Domesd., p. 117). In the 

 thirteenth century it belonged to one of his descendants, Mias t 

 Giffard (Test, de Nev., 142) . The form in which the name was then 

 spelt, Mi/s-ton seems to prove that its meaning is the town or village 

 of Mias (Giffard). 



53. Drawing conclusions from analogy, I have little doubt that 

 many names, which now puzzle us, contain in them abbreviated and 

 often corrupt forms of the names of some ancient owner. Certainly 

 the lists that we have among the subscriptions to the Anglo-Saxon 

 charters^ as well as that of Frisian names which Wassenberg has 

 compiled, seem to throw much light on this subject, though we 

 cannot directly connect many of the personal names with those of! 

 the places which they nevertheless seem to interpret. Thus we find 

 the name of Hunlaf, an abbot, appended to a Saxon charter of the 

 date of 854 1 : is it unlikely that one so called gave the name to 

 Hunlavin-tone ( = HunlaPs town) ? — certainly Woolavington, in J 

 in Sussex, was originally Wulflafing-tun ( = the tun, or village of 

 Wulflaf. 2 So too with what is now called Rollestone : in Domesday 

 it is accounted for under Wintehburne (W. Domesd., p. 41), and in 

 the Nom. Vill. it appears as Abbodeston, so called from belonging 

 to the Abbey of St. Peter's, Winchester ; but its present designation 



I believe to be derived from some old owner bearing a name which 

 in old Frisian appears as Rolle, and in Dutch as Roel, and which, 

 Wassenberg tells us, is a contraction of Rudolf, or Radulf, (now j 

 better known in its shortened form of Ralph or Rolf,) of by no 

 means infrequent occurrence in Domesday Book. A form of the 

 name which we meet with in sundry records viz., Roluestone 

 ( = Rolvestone) certainly confirms this view. 



54. It will have been observed that some of our illustrations have 

 been from instances in which a personal name occurs in connection 



^od. Dipl. 270. We meet with Hunlafing-ham in a charter from Cod. 

 Winton, (CD. 1231,) but I do not know where the place so designated may be ; 

 it does not seem to be in Wilts. 



2 Saxons in England, i., 60. 



