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    English river names

    It struck me the other day that the naming of English rivers has been quite spectacularly duplicative - there must be a dozen or possibly far more (I haven't tried counting) river names which are repeated at least once, often with multiple rivers of the same name. Just for example, there are five different significant Rivers Stour:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Stour

    Part of the explanation, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that a lot of the names have meanings (often in the Celtic language of the folk who lived here before the Anglo-Saxon invasion) like "river" or "water" (e.g. Ouse, Avon):

    https://canalrivertrustwaterfront.or...f-river-names/

    Even allowing for that factor, though, the number of repeated river names around England is very striking.

    #2
    Thames, Tame X2, Tamar, Tyne, Teme

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      #3
      Exe and Axe in Devon. I think it was the Dumnonii word for "wet thing".

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        #4
        There's more than one Avon.

        Edit: Which I see you've already mentioned.

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          #5
          There are four River Derwents, which wiki explains vaguely as "possibly of Celtic origin, either from Celtic for Oak Trees or for water". Sounds like "Celtic for water" is a default explanation.

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            #6
            This very thought occurred to me recently. I was reading something quite recently about the Ouse and whatever it was surprised me because I didn't think it had been in Yorkshire. Then I wondered if it actually meant the Great Ouse or Little Ouse in East Anglia. Only to discover, to my surprise, that there was yet another Ouse in Sussex which I'd never heard of.

            Edit:I remember now, it (the Sussex one) was the river in which Virginia Woolf drowned herself
            Last edited by ad hoc; 15-09-2020, 10:50.

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              #7
              I wonder if Rhondda is etymologically related to the Rhone?

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                #8
                There's quite a few River Calders too, with 4 in Northern England and 6 in Scotland. All probably from a common Brythonic Celtic word for hard or violent.

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                  #9
                  There's a few Esks and a couple of Rothers...

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by Greenlander View Post
                    There's more than one Avon.

                    Edit: Which I see you've already mentioned.
                    So from the Welsh side is it the Afon Afon?

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                      #11
                      One of the River Stours goes through my hometown (or where my mum still lives), and there's a smaller tributary of it called the Stour Brook.
                      ​​​​

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                        #12
                        Outside England both (mostly) - but there are two Dees

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post

                          Even allowing for that factor, though, the number of repeated river names around England is very striking.
                          Not all that surprising, really, given that many of them will have been named hundreds if not over a thousand years ago when communication between different parts of the country was limited and slow, and for that matter there were several countries in England. Chances are the community that named it didn't know the other rivers existed. Or didn't care.

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                            #14
                            The river Cam was named after the town, it was originally all called the Granta, and the place was known as Grantabrycge which evolved into Cambridge in the Middle Ages. The upper river is still known as the Granta.

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                              #15
                              There's a River Cam in Gloucestershire and also a Cambridge.

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                                #16
                                Six Yeos in Somerset, five in Devon - only one gets the attention though, due to a crudload of yoghurt and a cringeworthy TV ad campaign.

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by Vicarious Thrillseeker View Post
                                  Outside England both (mostly) - but there are two Dees
                                  And a Tees. Although a lot of newspapers etc. seem to think it's the Tee.

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                                    #18
                                    Several Dons too.

                                    With differing etymologies.

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                                      #19
                                      Several Dons too.
                                      Couple of things on that.

                                      First, mention of the Doncaster one always makes me think someone ought to write a novel set there called "Quiet Flows the Don, no, not that one."

                                      Second, when I was in what would now be year 8 or thereabouts, a classmate in a geography lesson once nudged me, pointed to a spot on the map we were studying, and sniggered "Look! It says "r don"!"

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                                        #20
                                        Not all that surprising, really, given that many of them will have been named hundreds if not over a thousand years ago when communication between different parts of the country was limited and slow, and for that matter there were several countries in England. Chances are the community that named it didn't know the other rivers existed. Or didn't care.
                                        That explains how duplication could not be deliberately avoided. But that wasn't my point. My point was that the duplication indicates that the names are from a much more limited menu than I would have expected. Nothing similar happens with, say, village names, or at least to nothing like the same extent. Of course, if there was a very strong tendency in the case of rivers, unlike villages, just to "say what you see" and give rivers names that mean things like "water" or "river" or "flowing thing", then that would explain it.

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                                          #21
                                          Excellent thread. I love rivers!

                                          I thought that the rivers close to me would have quite unique names. There only seems to be one River Wandle and Hogsmill River* (cleverly transposed to further differentiate from pale imitators) but the Mole and Wey each have a namesake.

                                          I'm not bothering to check the River Tillingbourne.

                                          * Art lovers may recognise this as the Hogsmill:


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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                            This very thought occurred to me recently. I was reading something quite recently about the Ouse and whatever it was surprised me because I didn't think it had been in Yorkshire. Then I wondered if it actually meant the Great Ouse or Little Ouse in East Anglia. Only to discover, to my surprise, that there was yet another Ouse in Sussex which I'd never heard of.

                                            Edit:I remember now, it (the Sussex one) was the river in which Virginia Woolf drowned herself
                                            I can remember reading aloud in History class in first year senior a bit of a textbook about the Battle of Stamford Bridge and the teacher (headmaster, in fact) and the whole class thought it was hilarious that I reckoned it was the River 'Ouse and not, as it turns out, the River Ooze.

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                                              #23
                                              I like that. So you could 'ave an 'ouseboat on it!

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
                                                That explains how duplication could not be deliberately avoided. But that wasn't my point. My point was that the duplication indicates that the names are from a much more limited menu than I would have expected. Nothing similar happens with, say, village names, or at least to nothing like the same extent. Of course, if there was a very strong tendency in the case of rivers, unlike villages, just to "say what you see" and give rivers names that mean things like "water" or "river" or "flowing thing", then that would explain it.
                                                I think that is almost certainly the case. Other landscape features tended to suffer (if that's the right word) the same sort of linguistic fate, and not just in Britain – such that there's a whole bunch of hills around the world whose names mean, essentially, Hill (or Hill Hill, or Hillhill Hill*, as various historical languages ebbed and flowed over the same region), and lakes named Lake, and deserts named Desert.

                                                People in general seem not to have felt the need to name their surroundings with as much descriptive care as their settlements – perhaps because even before they started settling down in villages, humans needed to append basic names to the physical geography in their immediate area; and by and large you didn't need anything a lot more nuanced than The River, or The Mountain, because everyone in your tribe knew the river and the mountain. If another bunch of people twenty or fifty or two hundred miles away were also calling their local landmarks The River and The Mountain too in their dialect, well it didn't matter terribly much because you were vanishingly unlikely to run across any scenario in which this could be the source of confusion.

                                                Once communities became more permanent, and indeed perhaps once people started travelling to and from them, I suppose it became more necessary to label your village something meaning 'hilltop settlement' or 'Wulf's homestead' or 'town at the River [X] ford', etc. to give them more specificity, but by and large the landscape names didn't need the extra detail.

                                                (* Or Hillhillhill Hill, in the case of Torpenhow Hill, though these days that is thought likely to be a false or contrived etymology.)
                                                Last edited by Various Artist; 15-09-2020, 15:04.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
                                                  Nothing similar happens with, say, village names, or at least to nothing like the same extent.
                                                  It really does. Over time, they sometimes get differentiated (eg Kingston upon Hull vs upon Thames), but there are tons of duplicates. Just have a look through Wikipedia's list of locations and you'll find loads of examples. I mean,there are two Brackenthwaites <i>in Cumbria</i>.

                                                  Of course, if there was a very strong tendency in the case of rivers, unlike villages, just to "say what you see" and give rivers names that mean things like "water" or "river" or "flowing thing", then that would explain it.
                                                  This is also a large part of it, as VA says.

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