TRACES OF HISTORY IN THE NAMES OF PLACES. WITH A VOCABULARY OF THE ROOTS OUT OF WHICH NAMES OF PLACES IN ENGLAND AND WALES ARE FORMED. BY FLAVELL EDMUNDS. 'The best and most forcible sense of a word is often that NEW EDITION. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. PREFACE. DA 645 E3 7872 IN THIS BOOK, the result of many years' reading and study, I have aimed to do, for names of places in England and Wales, something like what has been done for the ordinary words of our language by the Archbishop of Dublin and other writers. In defence of my choice of this neglected branch of antiquarian lore, I feel that nothing in the way of apology is necessary: a knowledge of place-names seems to me to be essential to a right understanding of the history, topography, and antiquities of a country. The place-names of any land are the footmarks of the races which have inhabited it, and are numerous and important in proportion to the length of the stay and the numerical strength of each race. Thus the map ་ supplies a clue to the history, and the history explains and confirms the hints of the map. While the latter gives us dates and details, leading incidents, and sketches of character, the former gives localities, preserves names of persons and forgotten episodes, and sometimes explains obscure allusions. Each is thus incomplete without the other, and together they form an essential part of a good education. In some cases important gaps in history are thus supplied, while in a still greater number the statements of historians receive valuable corroboration. It is certain that the nomenclature of a country reflects the fortunes of the people; and in this work I have taken pains to show that it not only preserves distinct records of the successive immigrations of races, but reveals with unerring accuracy the order in which they occurred, and the extent of the influence exercised by each upon the process of building up the people as we now find them. Of late years, a perception of the importance of local nomenclature to history has begun to show itself, but hitherto it has not been recognised to any great extent. Historians generally have contented themselves with brief passing references, leaving the systematic pursuit of this branch of their subject to the philologists. The consequence of this neglect has been that we rarely find a person of ordinary education who has any idea of the rich store of interesting information which thus lies all around him. Occasionally a name strikes the mind from its oddity, and reference is made to the local or county history, or to the gazetteer, but the information there given is always scanty and often erroneous. Out of many thousand place-names in England and Wales, not a tithe of the number are explained by gazetteers or county histories; and the explanations given are founded on no principles. Above all, no rules are given for the interpretation of similar cases. I have aimed to supply these defects, and to do so in a manner which may enable the student to pursue the study for himself. A word or two as to the mode of inquiry may here be fitly introduced. My process has been strictly inductive. Taking any given word, the first question is, does any part of it belong to a known language? If so, the next step is to interpret that part. The remainder of the word is then to be traced first in the same language, and afterwards in the other languages of races known to have inhabited the country. The information thus obtained will be either descriptive or historical. If descriptive, the next step is to inquire whether it accords with the present features of the locality, or with what may be fairly presumed to have been its features in the period when the language to which the word belongs was spoken there. If the word or any part of it be a proper |