ASSIGNMENT 3: OLD ENGLISH

Group components:

-Khadidiatou Diop
- José David Lammhider Baquero

3.2 PLACENAMES

3.2.1 Look at a map of Great Britain and try to find two place names containing each
of these Celtic words, locate on the map the position of the place names, are they
concentrated in one region?:
● cum/combe (deep valley)
○ Telscombe, England
○ Ilfracombe, England
● aber (mouth of river)
○ Aberaeron, Wales. The place name means “mouth of the River Aeron”
○ Abertillery, Wales. The place name means “mouth of the River Tyler”
● dun/dum (hill or fort)
○ Great Dunmow, England. The place name means “meadow on the hill”
○ Dunstable, England. The place name means “marketplace on the hill”
● avon (river)
○ Bradford-on-Avon, England.
The name of the town is related to the fact that it has been growing around a
ford across the river Avon (‘Bradford’ was first ‘Broadford’)
○ Stratford-upon-Avon, England. The name is a combination of the Old Eglish
word ‘straet’ (from Latin stratum= street), ‘ford’ (which indicates a part of the
river) and the Celtic word ‘avon’’
● pen (hill,top)
○ Penwortham, England. It derives from the combination of the words ‘pen’,
‘wort’ (green) and ‘ham’ (settlement)
○ Penistone, England. The place name comes from ‘pen’ + ‘ing’ (Old English
suffix to create place names) + ‘tun’ (it stands for ‘farmstead, enclosure,
village)
● bal (homestead)
○ Balerno, Scotland
○ Ballater, Scotland
 ○

3.2.2 Use an atlas (Great Britain) to identify towns and villages (two examples from
each) with place names ending in the following Scandinavian suffixes, then locate
them on the map and check if they are concentrated in one specific area:
● by (town)
○ Corby, England. It means “Kori’s settlement”
○ Rugby, England
● thwaite (piece of land)
○ Thornthwaite, England
○ Braithwaite, England
● thorp(e) (village)
○ Raventhorpe, England
○ Springthorpe, England
● toft (piece of land)
○ Wigtoft, England
○ Langtoft, England
● stoke (holy place)
○ Stoke Mandeville, England
○ Stoke Gabriel, England
Links for exercises at point 3.2:
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.0693144,-3.8455184,5.97z
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_in_England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burghs_in_Scotland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_in_Wales
http://www.viking.no/e/england/danelaw/ekart-danelaw.htm
http://astakoselementary.blogspot.com/2010/09/british-isles-outline-map.html