English Place-Names from a Scandinavian Perspective A study on place-names in Herefordshire, Cumbria and the areas reachable by Viking ship through the Humber Engelska ortnamn ur ett Skandinaviskt perspektiv En språkvetenskaplig studie av ortnamn i Herefordshire, Cumbria och de områden som var nåbara med vikingaskepp via Humber Martin Kahnberg Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences English English III: Degree Project 15 credits Supervisor: Marika Kjellén Examiner: Silvia Kunitz Autumn 2020 Title: English Place-Names from a Scandinavian Perspective: A study on place- names in Herefordshire, Cumbria and the areas reachable by Viking ship through the Humber Titel på svenska: Engelska ortsnamn ur ett Skandinaviskt perspektiv: en studie av ortnamn i Herefordshire, Cumbria och de områden som var nåbara med vikingaskepp via Humber. Author: Martin Kahnberg Pages: 237 Abstract In an attempt to discern the prevalence of British place-names with a Scandinavian origin this paper is a small linguistic study on place-names in Herefordshire, Cumbria and the areas along rivers Trent and Ouse. Based on modern maps place-names were included in the study. Older forms of the place-names were retrieved, and these old forms were analysed in order to understand the modern versions of the place-names. Place-name elements were grouped and their frequencies calculated in an attempt to understand the distribution of elements in each area. 1300 place-names were categorised based on their presumed origin, though some lacked the necessary information. Several place-names were given new possible derivations based on their categorisation and the elements they contained. Modern place-name elements/features hinting at a possibly Scandinavian place- name in the past were identified and described. Possible geographical patterns of Scandinavian place-names were found in central Herefordshire, in south-eastern Cumbria and in north-western Yorkshire. Possible implications of the place-names and their geographical concentrations were considered, yielding a hint on an area that might have been pivotal in the evolution of Old English. Keywords: place-names, Trent, Ouse, Ure, Swale, Humber, Cumbria, Herefordshire, derivations, Scandinavian, Old Norse Sammanfattning på svenska I ett försök att urskilja utbredningen av brittiska ortnamn med ett skandinaviskt ursprung är denna uppsats en liten språkvetenskaplig studie av ortnamn i Herefordshire, Cumbria och längs floderna Trent och Ouse. Utifrån moderna kartor i en viss upplösning inkluderades alla synliga ortnamn i områdena. Äldre versioner av ortnamnen samlades in, och dessa gamla former analyserades i syfte att undersöka bakgrunden till de moderna ortnamnsvarianterna. Ortnamnens delar grupperades och deras frekvenser beräknades i syfte att förstå hur dessa fördelades i de olika områdena. 1300 ortnamn kategoriserades utifrån deras förmodade ursprung, men några ortnamn saknade den nödvändiga information undersökningen krävde. Flera ortnamn fick nya tänkbara betydelser baserat på den kategori de tilldelats och de ortnamnsdelar de innehöll. Moderna ortnamnsdelar som skulle kunna indikera en forntida nordisk ortnamnsvariant identifierades och beskrevs. Tänkbara geografiska nordiska ortnamnsmönster upptäcktes i centrala Herefordshire, i sydöstra Cumbria och i nordvästra Yorkshire. Tänkbara implikationer av ortnamnen och deras geografiska koncentrationer betraktades, vilket resulterade i upptäckten av ett område som kan ha påverkat fornengelskans utveckling i väldigt hög utsträckning. Nyckelord: ortnamn, Trent, Ouse, Swale, Humber, Cumbria, Herefordshire, betydelser, skandinaviska, nordiska, fornnordiska Contents Contents..................................................................................................................................................4 1. Introduction and aims.........................................................................................................................1 2. Background.........................................................................................................................................2 3. Methods.............................................................................................................................................15 4. Results and analysis..........................................................................................................................35 5. Discussion.......................................................................................................................................120 6 Conclusion........................................................................................................................................123 References...........................................................................................................................................128 Appendix 1...........................................................................................................................................130 Appendix 2..........................................................................................................................................231 Kahnberg 1. Introduction and aims Swedish tourists driving through the English countryside might pass a road sign to Framlingham. Saying the name out loud might yield a surprise at how Swedish it all sounds, with framling being very close to the Swedish word främling ('stranger') and ham sounding like the Swedish word hem ('home'). Framlingham (known as Framelingaham in the Domesday book from 1086) is a small market town situated in the old Danelaw - an area in eastern England inhabited by Old Norse speakers in the 10th century. When a village was built in the past it usually received a name in the local language or dialect. That name would then change slightly following the currents of spoken language change in the area, and could sometimes be replaced completely due to conquests, political innovations or language standardisation. If a village had received an Old Norse name a thousand years ago it ought to have changed dramatically with the Norman conquest in 1066, when the ruling language in this area changed from Old Norse and Old English to centuries of Norman French. The standardisation of the English language in the 15th and 16th century could also have caused changes to the local language, but as seen above the name Framlingham is very similar to the written form of 1086. Present day English place-names might contain traces of Old Norse place-names, distinguishable when their signs were known. Place-names are important since they tend to evolve with the local language. Cauplandia for instance changed through Coplande -> Coupeland -> Coupland -> Caupilland to Copland in a timespan of 100 years (Sedgefield, 1915, p. 37). Place-names also appear frequently in old text material (e.g. maps, letters, chronicles), possibly providing a chain of written versions of the same place-name over the years as place-names are worn and reformed over time (Ståhl, 1970, p. 15). Non-standardised languages have a tendency of being spelt the way they are pronounced, thus yielding a chance for the language/place-names researcher to study old local pronunciation changes over time. Place-names have been studied for various reasons over the years (e.g. to bring honour and glory to the country through an unbroken line to a divine or superior language, or to provide information for various proto-languages of older times), but very few studies on English place-names have been published recently as the linguistic focus has shifted from the proto- indo-european language to sociolinguistics for instance. Old Norse place-names in England 1 / 237 Kahnberg could hold valuable information on the evolution of Old and Middle English and especially the transition from Old English to Middle English, a transition showing signs of influence from the Old Norse language. A new study on place-names in three different areas of England (Herefordshire in the west, Cumbria in the north-west, and the areas reachable by Viking ship through the Humber in the north-east) could perhaps shed some new light by approaching the English place-names of old from a Scandinavian perspective. The following research questions will be addressed in this study: • What place-name elements have been frequently used in each of the three regions? • How frequent are possibly Scandinavian place-names in each of the three regions? • What characteristics of a modern day place-name could indicate a Scandinavian place-name in the past? • What probable place-name derivations have been overlooked in the past? • Does the geographical distribution of possibly Scandinavian place-names indicate areas where the Old Norse language could have been alive long enough to impact the Old English language? This study used written records of old place-names in three different geographical areas of England and previous place-names research combined with language history knowledge from both the English and the Scandinavian side in order to find answers to the research questions. 2. Background Modern place-names research resides mainly within linguistics, although rooted in the field of history (Ståhl, 1970, p. 12). Thus section 2 starts by giving some historical background information on the Old English language and the contacts between Old English and Old Norse in section 2.1. Section 2.2 deals with previous place-names research and section 2.3 with other valuable tools for the place-names research in the current