What's Inwards A Name?

The British are a warm too generous people. Over the centuries they conduct keep welcomed the Vikings, the Romans, Saxons too Normans into their homes. They conduct keep fifty-fifty allowed them to mention their towns too cities. As a outcome the origins too meanings of Britain's place-names are equally varied equally the country's many invaders.

Toponymy yesteryear Emu Analytics is a dandy resources for exploring the linguistic origins of place-names inward the UK. The map allows yous to pick out private 'languages' too 'language families' to persuasion the geographical distribution of place-names which conduct keep a mutual linguistic communication root. The map likewise includes a regex search selection which allows yous to search for substrings inward place-names, for instance to persuasion all the towns too villages ending inward 'thorpe' (old Norse give-and-take for 'homestead').

By using the linguistic communication filters too the regex search selection it is possible to persuasion where dissimilar invaders of Britain settled inward the province based on the geographic distribution of their influence on the country's place-names.


Places! is some other useful resources for anyone interested inward the geographical distribution of place-names. Places! allows yous to map the relative density of place-names inward a pose out of dissimilar countries roughly the world. Using the application yous tin teach inward place-name prefixes or suffixes too persuasion a map showing the geographic distribution of place-names containing those terms.

For example, inward the United Kingdom of Great Britain too Northern Ireland of Britain too Northern Republic of Ireland nosotros tin teach inward the place-name suffixes of -thorpe too -thwaite to run into where the Vikings settled inward Britain. The resulting map shows that these ii place-name endings are pop throughout the expanse that was ane time known equally the Danelaw, next the Viking invasions of the 9th century.

If nosotros conduct keep ii to a greater extent than mutual town endings, such equally -ford or -bridge nosotros expose that the geographic distribution of places amongst these endings is far to a greater extent than evenly spread across the UK.

The historical influence of the Vikings inward the expanse ane time known equally Danelaw tin likewise last observed inward the geographical distribution of English linguistic communication surnames. If yous teach inward a surname into named too thus it volition demo yous a heatmap highlighting where in that location is an unusually high pose out of people amongst that mention inward the UK.

Surnames ending inward 'son' are unremarkably an indicator of Viking ancestry inward the UK. Enter names such equally 'Johnson' too 'Robertson' into named too yous volition expose that these surnames are to a greater extent than mutual inward the Danelaw expanse than elsewhere inward the UK.