Placenames in Britain Trivia Quiz

Answer: Derby

Derby = deer-farm or farm near deer.

Rug-by: has been explained as deriving from Rock-by (farm on a rock) because of the Domesday Book form: Roche-berie. On second thoughts, that is not a very likely origin. The real meaning of Roche-berie seems to have been "Hroca's fortified place", Hroca being a personal name, and berie deriving from Old English "burg" (fort).

Crosby: village with a cross. Selby: village by the 'sele', which means willows. Kirkby = farm near a kirk. Or village with a kirk. Whitby = white farm. Other 'by'-names: Corby (from Kori's village); Grimsby (Grim's village). A 'fake' 'by'- name is Tenby, which only looks as if it were a Viking name, but actually developed from Welsh din + bych which means little fort, and is identical to Denbigh.)

Answer: Sarisbury

As all who visited Old Sarum will know, the original city had a different location.The Romans called the city Sorviodunum. The Anglo-Saxons renamed it Searu-burgh, in which burgh translates the Latin dunum, a fortification. In the Domesday Book it is recorded as Sarisberie. Normans had some problems with the pronunciation of an R and made an L of it, more or less in the same way as when some Asians turn 'rice' into 'lice' or French 'riz' into 'du lit'.

Answer: a hill or a mountain

The confusion between 'burh' (fortification) and 'beorg' (hill) is understandable because, in both cases, there can be a link with the idea of storing away as in AS 'beorgan'. Indeed, hills were used to 'store away' corpses in protected places. And a 'burh', too, was a hiding place where you were stored away in safety.

It's not always easy to find out which meaning of 'borough' is actually used in names such as Scarborough, Middlesbrough, Peterborough, Gainsborough, Edinburgh.

Answer: a Roman camp

Other examples include Chichester, Colchester, Gloucester, Worcester, Bicester, Tadcaster.

Answer: place where you can wade through a river

Examples include Long Melford, Bedford, Bradford and Hungerford. In Dutch, a ford is 'een voorde', and occurs in place names such as Bosvoorde, or surnames such as Vandevoorde. (Henk Vandevoorde = Henry Ford).

Answer: home

Examples include Lavenham, Grantham, Birmingham, Wrexham, Hexham, Southampton and Northampton. Ton is related to German 'Zaun', a fence, and Dutch 'tuin', a fenced-in garden. 'Ton' meant that a particular place was protected by a fence. City-walls were a later prerogative of the wealthier places only, and permission to erect them had to be obtained via a charter.

Answer: presence of monks

The root word is 'monasterium'. This Latin word led to such placenames as Muenster in Germany or Munsterbilzen, Ingelmunster, Waasmunster in Belgium, etc. In English there was a vowel shift from 'o' or 'u' to 'i'. This vowel shift occurs in names such as the York Minster but also in less well-known words such as 'minchin' for a female monk, for example, the nuns belonging to the Order of St. Benedict who devote their lives to prayer and study.

Answer: sheep pasture

Other 'ley' or 'leigh' words include Buckley (not from bucks = dollars or bucks = rams, but from beech trees: a clearing in a beechwood area), Oakley (same, but an oakwood area) and Bromley (forest clearing where broom grows), as well as Barnsley, Eastleigh, Ripley and Dudley.

Sometimes the 'ley'-ending is based on a misunderstanding. An example of this is Beverley. Originally, this was 'bever lec', which means beaver stream. In popular perception it became -ley, an incorrect interpretation because normally beavers are not to be found in a woodclearing.

Answer: dirt village

The Latin name was Salinae, which points to the early presence of salt mines. Somehow the place became rather muddy and a new name was given: 'muddy place where there are salt works'. Other -wich and -wick names are Norwich, Ipswich, Barnoldswick and Keswick (cheese-farm!).

Answer: lake

The general meaning of 'mere' in Germanic languages is a (large) body of water. Sometimes this becomes 'the sea' as in German, in other cases it's a smaller body of water as in Dutch ('Ijsselmeer het Merengebied' is Dutch for the Lake District.) Funnily enough, German 'See' then also got the meaning of lake as in Bodensee and Genfer See.