Anything with wick in it was a Viking village. Keswick, Hawick, Wick, York (Jorvik), Norwich, Ipswich,
'Wic' was a Saxon port, I thought. According to the Jorvik museum, the Vikings struggled with the Saxon name for York (Eoforwic) and changed it to Jorvik.
Norwich means 'northern port' and Ipswich (Gippeswic) means 'corner port'.
Edit - see also Harwich which is 'here' (pronounced herrer I think, and refers to the military) + 'wic' (port).
Wootton Bassett, Berwick Bassett and a number of other places with "Bassett" in them means they were owned by the Bassett family who also owned liquorice plantations. The same owner of Bertie Bassett sweets.
Now does anyone know what Southend is at the south end of?
Villages near where I grew up included Steeple Bumpstead and Helions Bumpstead (where Bumpstead came from bumsted, Anglo Saxon for "place of reeds") as well as Six Mile Bottom and the village of Ugley (which happily has an Ugley Women's Institute).
Balloch means "village by the loch" in Gaelic. The most famous one is of course beside Loch Lomond, but there are also places named Balloch in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Inverness-shire and Fife.
Yes, those place names (especially six mile bottom) amused me as a child
In Moldova (the bit of Romania called Moldova, not the Republic of Moldova), there are two villages founded by fleeing Szekely from here (after they were massacred by the Austrians) called (in Hungarian) "God help us!" and "God welcome us!"
Wootton Bassett, Berwick Bassett and a number of other places with "Bassett" in them means they were owned by the Bassett family who also owned liquorice plantations. The same owner of Bertie Bassett sweets.
Now does anyone know what Southend is at the south end of?
The ~by suffix means village or settlement in the old Norse language.
The Vikings are also behind the large number of ~thwaite endings in the North, particularly around Cumbria. It is Norse for clearing or meadow and might be behind the naming of Twatt in the Orkneys.
I believe that Pity Me in County Durham is a corruption of the French words Petitt Mer - little pool - which is what the place is next to.
Northumberland has Once Brewed / Twice Brewed although the source isn't clear. Twice Brewed came first, being originally an inn and :
There are several stories which explain the name of the inn. The most romantic story has it that on the eve of the Battle of Hexham in 1464, Yorkist foot soldiers demanded their beer be brewed again because it lacked its usual fighting strength. The ploy worked as the Lancastrian army later fled after an early morning raid against the rejuvenated troops. A more prosaic explanation is that 18th-century farmers tended to brew (and serve) weak ale, and hence "twice brewed" meant the inn offered stronger ale. A third theory is that Hadrian's Wall snakes its way across the brows, or "brews", of two hills where there is also a meeting of a pair of drovers’ roads
'Wic' was a Saxon port, I thought. According to the Jorvik museum, the Vikings struggled with the Saxon name for York (Eoforwic) and changed it to Jorvik.
Norwich means 'northern port' and Ipswich (Gippeswic) means 'corner port'.
Edit - see also Harwich which is 'here' (pronounced herrer I think, and refers to the military) + 'wic' (port).
Maybe there are parallel etymologies. East Anglia was the Danelaw too so I'm not sure where the Saxons got the word from.
From Wikipedia
Some elements, such as wich and wick, can have many meanings. Generally wich/wick/wyke indicates a farm or settlement (e.g. Keswick "cheese farm"). However, some of the sites are of Roman or early Post-Roman origin, in which the wich represents Latin vicus ("place").
If you go to Faroes or Iceland there are a lot of "viks" and I thought I remembered reading Keswick was a Viking name. But maybe I misremembered.
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