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Origins of local place names


Parsnip

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At me mum's this morning and she had the kind of book out that you'd expect a 70 odd year old woman to have out on a Saturday afternoon. The AA guide to place name origins 1984.

Quite interesting actually...

Derby, the Village of Deer.

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Nottingham, home of the Snot people.

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Mansfield, just a big tit.

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8 hours ago, Pastinaak said:

At me mum's this morning and she had the kind of book out that you'd expect a 70 odd year old woman to have out on a Saturday afternoon. The AA guide to place name origins 1984.

Quite interesting actually...

Derby, the Village of Deer.

20190727_150646.thumb.jpg.7653b2bf5ec4fe0a303bca1bfa00237c.jpg

Nottingham, home of the Snot people.

20190727_150549.thumb.jpg.d9a6b6abe08f4ab55d2446149132847f.jpg

Mansfield, just a big tit.

20190727_150627.thumb.jpg.2c2be9a2770c794e6c4d3be1365f32e1.jpg

Spelling mistake mate, should of been Derby, village of beer......

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most place names derive from a fairly simple and obvious description of a place

e.g. Quarndon - from quorn (edible fungus) and don meaning hill i.e the hill with the edible fungus.

similarly chaddesdon -  from chad meaning faeces and don meaning hill

Chester or cester meaning from the Roman or romany for fortified encampment, so Chesterfield - a Roman encampment in a field - or Doncaster - a fortified Roman camp on a hill, or Leicester - a lea or woodland clearing populated by gypsies. 

Other meanings are slightly more obscure E.g. Belper  - which just means a "good fart". 

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4 hours ago, RamNut said:

most place names derive from a fairly simple and obvious description of a place

e.g. Quarndon - from quorn (edible fungus) and don meaning hill i.e the hill with the edible fungus.

similarly chaddesdon -  from chad meaning faeces and don meaning hill

Chester or cester meaning from the Roman or romany for fortified encampment, so Chesterfield - a Roman encampment in a field - or Doncaster - a fortified Roman camp on a hill, or Leicester - a lea or woodland clearing populated by gypsies. 

Other meanings are slightly more obscure E.g. Belper  - which just means a "good fart". 

Shame....

We were always taught at school that Belper was from Norman French meaning a "beautiful retreat". From "beau" or the feminine "belle" and "repair".

So it's where the norman knights went when off duty as there were more pubs and comely wenches. 

Obviously now the meaning has become corrupted over the years so a "belle repair" is now as likely to refer to a particularly well installed 2-gang  junction box by @Boycie

?

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Uttoxeter is in the Domesday book as Wotocheshede which is Anglo Saxon for "Wot's homestead on the Heath".

 

I was about 20 before I realised the version my uncle told me was a wind up, for years I thought it was named after "Utto the ox eater" ?

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Some similar sounding names mean very different things...

Allestree - alles as in all - all trees, nothing but trees, trees everywhere, whereas.....

Allenton - ton, district, one hundred acres, and Allen meaning small man (as in Woody Allen) = one hundred acres populated by small men.

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On 27 July 2019 at 16:19, Pastinaak said:

At me mum's this morning and she had the kind of book out that you'd expect a 70 odd year old woman to have out on a Saturday afternoon. The AA guide to place name origins 1984.

Quite interesting actually...

Derby, the Village of Deer.

20190727_150646.thumb.jpg.7653b2bf5ec4fe0a303bca1bfa00237c.jpg

Nottingham, home of the Snot people.

20190727_150549.thumb.jpg.d9a6b6abe08f4ab55d2446149132847f.jpg

Mansfield, just a big tit.

20190727_150627.thumb.jpg.2c2be9a2770c794e6c4d3be1365f32e1.jpg

It seems a lifetime ago now but I was a librarian in the Local History Library in the Wardwick in the 60s and I wrote a booklet giving the derivations of local place names. Interestingly although Derby does indeed stem from the town of the deer, it doesn't mean the animal now known as deer. Deer then, like the modern German "tier" meant wild beast such as boars, deer, wolves etc. As the beasts have disappeared leaving only the animals with antlers the word has come to mean them. 

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