I thought I would muse a little on places in Lincolnshire and their names.
I learnt a little about the various suffixes of towns and villages at school, but just a little research shows that it was all rather over-simplified. For example, I was always told that ‘wick’ was Anglo-Saxon for ‘market, and therefore Butterwick was obviously derived from a dairy or a place where butter was sold. Apparently not true, because ‘wick’ can also be of Scandinavian origin, especially when the place is found near the sea, because it means ‘inlet’ or ‘creek’. The Butterwick where my people come is just a mile or two from the Wash and it seems pretty likely that Butruic, as it was called in the Domesday Book, was a Viking settlement.
It stands to reason that the earliest Viking invaders or settlers would create colonies near the coast. Skegness was one of them. Admittedly ‘ness’ can be Old English as well, but ‘Skeg’ has the giveaway K, characteristic of Scandinavia. The suffix ‘ney’ was old Norse for ‘island’ – eg Orkney – but came to mean an enclosure or, especially in Lincolnshire, land reclaimed from the marsh. Bardney, Friskney and Stickney, where I lived briefly as a child.
Butterwick is not far from Benington, an Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, ending, which shows how the two nations lived in close proximity to each other. I expect the local derby football matches had a bit of needle in them. I read that there are places where the Vikings took over an English settlement and renamed it, but only partially. Grimston (there’s one in Leicestershire, another in Yorkshire) has an Anglo-Saxon ending, but a Scandinavian prefix. It looks like Grim gave his name to the place but didn’t bother to remove the suffix, perhaps not wanting people to get his village confused with Grimsby.
The ‘by’ ending is well-known as the great Viking indicator – Hundleby, Spilsby, Hemingby, etc (incidentally, I read that Rugby in Warwickshire is the most southerly town with a 'by' suffix) – but less well-known that it can be a prefix occasionally. The village of Bicker is the only example I can bring to mind, being a combination of ‘settlement’ and ‘marsh’. The ‘car’ in Redcar, Yorkshire, is another variation of the Norse word for marshland.
So ‘Bicker’ does not mean ‘Wrangle’, where an uncle once lived. That name means ‘crooked’ in Old Norse and refers to a winding stream long since gone.
Back near Butterwick, there’s Frieston, an English ending with a suspiciously Nordic beginning, and down the road there’s Fishtoft, definitely Scandinavian, but I doubt it’s got anything to do with fish. I may well be wrong about that. In any case, the ‘fish’ came later; the village was simply ‘Toft’ in Domesday.
I learnt a little about the various suffixes of towns and villages at school, but just a little research shows that it was all rather over-simplified. For example, I was always told that ‘wick’ was Anglo-Saxon for ‘market, and therefore Butterwick was obviously derived from a dairy or a place where butter was sold. Apparently not true, because ‘wick’ can also be of Scandinavian origin, especially when the place is found near the sea, because it means ‘inlet’ or ‘creek’. The Butterwick where my people come is just a mile or two from the Wash and it seems pretty likely that Butruic, as it was called in the Domesday Book, was a Viking settlement.
It stands to reason that the earliest Viking invaders or settlers would create colonies near the coast. Skegness was one of them. Admittedly ‘ness’ can be Old English as well, but ‘Skeg’ has the giveaway K, characteristic of Scandinavia. The suffix ‘ney’ was old Norse for ‘island’ – eg Orkney – but came to mean an enclosure or, especially in Lincolnshire, land reclaimed from the marsh. Bardney, Friskney and Stickney, where I lived briefly as a child.
Butterwick is not far from Benington, an Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, ending, which shows how the two nations lived in close proximity to each other. I expect the local derby football matches had a bit of needle in them. I read that there are places where the Vikings took over an English settlement and renamed it, but only partially. Grimston (there’s one in Leicestershire, another in Yorkshire) has an Anglo-Saxon ending, but a Scandinavian prefix. It looks like Grim gave his name to the place but didn’t bother to remove the suffix, perhaps not wanting people to get his village confused with Grimsby.
The ‘by’ ending is well-known as the great Viking indicator – Hundleby, Spilsby, Hemingby, etc (incidentally, I read that Rugby in Warwickshire is the most southerly town with a 'by' suffix) – but less well-known that it can be a prefix occasionally. The village of Bicker is the only example I can bring to mind, being a combination of ‘settlement’ and ‘marsh’. The ‘car’ in Redcar, Yorkshire, is another variation of the Norse word for marshland.
So ‘Bicker’ does not mean ‘Wrangle’, where an uncle once lived. That name means ‘crooked’ in Old Norse and refers to a winding stream long since gone.
Back near Butterwick, there’s Frieston, an English ending with a suspiciously Nordic beginning, and down the road there’s Fishtoft, definitely Scandinavian, but I doubt it’s got anything to do with fish. I may well be wrong about that. In any case, the ‘fish’ came later; the village was simply ‘Toft’ in Domesday.
Boston, of course, is St Botolph’s town, but now incorporates the old Danish settlement of Skirbeck. ‘Beck’ means stream in both language traditions, but we know that Skirbeck was called a ‘wapentake’, a small administrative unit, similar to the Saxon ‘hundred’, which theoretically contained a hundred households. The concept of the wapentake wasn’t finally abolished until 1888. It’s possible that the ‘Skir’ means ‘church’, for it’s not just Scotland where ‘kirk’ has that meaning.
Back to ‘wick’ and a variation is ‘wig’, as in Wigford, the area that became part of Lincoln as I know it today. This time it does mean market, market by the river crossing to be precise and lies at the bottom of the hill on which ancient Lincoln proper stands. There’s still a bit of snobbery in the city about whether you live ‘uphill’ or ‘downhill’.
The various names in Lincoln are reminders of the different peoples who became strands in the fabric of the city. The ‘Lin’ in Lincoln comes from ‘llyn’, a Celtic word meaning lake; and the ‘coln’ is a reminder of the Roman colony established on the hill for retired soldiers, who would have been of all nationalities throughout the Empire, not just Italian. The Romans also left us the Fossdyke, as well as the Fosse Way and Ermine Street, which meet at the bottom of Cross o’Cliffe Hill. (By the way, that’s where one of the Eleanor Crosses was erected). The Angles founded Wigford and the Scandinavians left us several ‘gates’ or streets, such as Hungate and Saltergate. The Normans are remembered in Beaumont Fee, as well as the Castle and Cathedral.
I’d better stop before I get on to Swineshead, which probably has nothing to do with pigs. I strongly doubt that that Threekingham has any royal connection at all.
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