How names are built
Name Prefixes and Suffixes: The Real Building Blocks
At a glance
Most old English place-names have two parts: a first element that describes the place or names its owner, and a final element (the generic) that says what kind of place it was, such as -ton from Old English tūn, 'farmstead, village, estate', or -by from Old Norse bý, 'farmstead, village'. Early personal names were built in a similar way from a stock of elements, such as Old English wulf, 'wolf', and stān, 'stone', in Wulfstan. Look-alike endings can hide different words, so a name's meaning has to be checked against its early spellings.
- Most common English place-name element
- Old English tūn, giving -ton
- Scandinavian markers
- -by, -thorpe, -thwaite, -toft
- Old English personal-name elements
- æthel 'noble', ēad 'prosperity', beorht 'bright', wine 'friend', wulf 'wolf'
- Old Norse personal-name elements
- Þór- (Thor), Ás- 'god', -björn 'bear', -ólfr 'wolf', -kell 'cauldron'
Real name elements, and two we built
| Name | Meaning or origin | Status |
|---|---|---|
| -ton Old English tūn | 'Farmstead, village, estate'. Bolton, Brighton. The ancestor of the word town. [2] | Recorded |
| -ham Old English hām or hamm | Either hām 'homestead' (Nottingham) or hamm 'enclosure, land in a river bend'. Only early spellings tell them apart. [6] | Recorded |
| -ley Old English lēah | Woodland, a clearing or wood pasture. Barnsley, Crawley, Oakley. [2] | Recorded |
| -ford Old English ford | A river crossing. Oxford is 'ford associated with oxen'. [1] | Recorded |
| -wick, -wich Old English wīc | A specialised settlement or trading place: Ipswich, Norwich, Chiswick. Not the same as Old Norse vík 'bay' in Lerwick and Wick. [3] | Recorded |
| -by Old Norse bý | 'Farmstead, village'. Derby, Grimsby, Ashby. [2] | Recorded |
| -thorpe Old Norse thorp (sometimes Old English throp) | 'Outlying farmstead'. Usually Norse, as in Grimethorpe and Kettlethorpe, but some, like Thorpe in Surrey, are English. [2] | Recorded |
| -thwaite Old Norse thveit | 'Clearing'. Thwaite, Braithwaite, Micklethwaite. [2] | Recorded |
| Wulfstan Old English | wulf 'wolf' + stān 'stone'. The parts were combined without forming a sensible phrase. [5] | Recorded |
| Edward Old English Ēadweard | ēad 'prosperity' + weard 'guard'. A two-part name that survived as a single, indivisible one. [5] | Recorded |
| Þorkell (Thorkel) Old Norse | Thor + ketill 'cauldron', shortened to -kell. [13] | Recorded |
| Ingólfr Old Norse | The ending -ólfr is úlfr 'wolf' in an unstressed position. [14] | Recorded |
| Ashthwaite Old Norse style place-name | Built from ash (the tree) + thwaite 'clearing'. | Built from real parts |
| Wulfbeorht Old English style personal name | Built from wulf 'wolf' + beorht 'bright'. | Built from real parts |
- Recorded Found in historical records.
- Built from real parts Made by us from genuine word elements.
Two parts make a name
Most English place-names are compounds. The last part, the generic, says what kind of place it is: a farm, a ford, a hill, a clearing. The first part, the specific, picks out this one: who owned it, what grew there, what it looked like. Oxford is the ford associated with oxen. In Old English and Old Norse the specific always comes first.[1]
Celtic languages often do it the other way round. Welsh Llandudno is 'church of Tudno', with the generic first.[1]
Common place-name endings
-ton comes from Old English tūn, 'farmstead, village, estate'. It is the most common element in English place-names and was still forming new names around the time of Domesday Book. -ham is usually hām, 'homestead', an element used mostly in the early Anglo-Saxon period. But some -hams come from hamm, 'enclosure, land in a river bend', and Durham and Oldham come from Old Norse holm, 'island of dry ground'.[2][4][6]
-ley is lēah, used of woods, clearings and wood pasture. -ford is a river crossing. -wick and -wich are usually wīc, a specialised settlement or trading place, as in Ipswich and Norwich. In Scotland, though, Lerwick and Wick come from Old Norse vík, 'bay'.[2][3]
The Scandinavian endings mark where Viking-Age settlers lived, mainly Yorkshire, the East Midlands, East Anglia and the north-west. -by is bý, 'farmstead, village'. -thorpe is usually Old Norse thorp, 'outlying farmstead', but Old English had its own throp, and some thorpes and thrups outside the Danelaw are English, such as Thorpe in Surrey and Thrupp in Gloucestershire.[15][16][17] -thwaite is thveit, 'clearing', and -toft is 'farmstead, farm plot', as in Lowestoft.[2]
Endings can deceive. Of three Embletons, only one is really a tūn name. Hampton never had a p in the first place. Always check a name against its early spellings.[4]
Building blocks of personal names
Early Germanic names were made from a shared stock of elements, a habit inherited from Indo-European. Some names had one element (Old English Beadu, 'war'). Many combined two: Beaduheard is 'war' + 'hard, brave'.[5]
Common Old English elements include æthel 'noble', ēad 'prosperity, riches', beorht 'bright', wine 'friend', wulf 'wolf' and weard 'guard, watchman'.[7][8][9][10][11][12]
Some compounds make sense as phrases: Heathuwulf, 'battle-wolf', is close to the kennings of Old English poetry. Many do not. Wulfstan is 'wolf-stone', and the parts were probably never meant to be read together. So be careful with lists that translate every name as a neat phrase.[5]
Old Norse worked the same way. Thor appears in many names, such as Þorsteinn, Þorbjörn and Þorkell. Ketill, 'cauldron', shrinks to -kell, and úlfr, 'wolf', becomes -ólfr at the end of a name, as in Ingólfr.[13][14]
After the Norman Conquest, two-part naming gave way to choosing from a stock of ready-made names. A few old compounds survive as single names, such as Edward, from Ēadweard.[5]
Using real elements in invented names
Invented names feel right when they follow these patterns. A place called Ashthwaite reads as northern English because readers half-recognise the ending, and Wulfbeorht sounds Anglo-Saxon because both parts are real Old English elements. Neither is necessarily a recorded name, so we label examples like these 'Built from real parts'.
- Specific first, generic last: Ashthwaite, not Thwaiteash.
- Match the landscape: a -ford needs a river, a -thwaite a clearing, a -ley some woodland.
- Match the region: Norse endings for a northern or eastern feel, Old English ones for the south and Midlands. Real places do mix them, as in Old Norse -by on an English personal name, but a random mix of Welsh, Norse and Latin won't sound like anywhere.
- For people, pair two real elements the way the old names did, and don't worry if the result doesn't make a sentence. Wulfstan didn't either.