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them. Nottingham can be thankful for the Norman
difficulty in pronouncing the letters
sn
or the
“settlement of Snot”
might now be a laughing stock
of a city called
Snotingaham.
On a more romantic note the Normans renamed
places they found especially beautiful and sometimes
attempted to create a new reality with less picturesque
locations. Beaulieu is a nightmare to spell but reflects
the fact that embraced at it was by the New Forest the
Normans thought it beau, beautiful. Over in Essex,
Fulepit meaning Filthy Hole received a complete
makeover, in name at least, becoming Beaumont or
Fair Hill. The French would have recognized the
meaning of Merdegrave in Leicestershire and it was
soon renamed Belgrave. The Normans spoke French
but wrote in Latin and this affected some place names
for example Pomfret in Yorkshire was renamed to be
closer to the Norman word for bridge but because
they wrote it down in Latin it became Pontefracto or
Pontefract – broken bridge.
The Normans introduced a feudal society although a
form of feudalism had begun in some areas before
they came as a contract of protection between Knights
and landowners in response to never ending raids
from Europe. The imposition of new feudal lords led
to place names representing dominant families.
Sometimes Norman manorial names just added a
touch of the old ooh-la-la to the existing Anglo Saxon
name, Ashby-de-la-Zouch being a good example.
Usefully for the mediaeval traveller at least, the
Normans quite often pinned a manorial name to a
pre-existing topographical place name as seen in
Hurstpierpoint and Herstmonceux in Sussex.
The Norseman struggled to pronounce sh and ch so
Shipton became Skipton and Cheswick became
Keswick.
Trees feature in Viking names, Linby is the
village with lime trees and Selby is the village with
willows – both would be very useful to the traveller.
Less useful are villages named for an important man
for example Oadby and Grimsby which use common
Scandinavian names.
A village name might also describe who lived there,
the English say as in Ingleby or the Norwegians in
Normanby. A secondary village, one of lesser
importance to a larger neighbour is called
thorpe
as
in Scotton and Scotton Thorpe and the word could
also describe the direction from the main settlement
or a topographical feature as in Westhorpe and
Woodthorpe. Fascinating folk the Vikings. Look out
for news of our visits to
The Viking World
exhibition in the huge new exhibition hall at
The British Museum from March 2014 – a hall so
huge it’s going to house a 120-foot Viking ship.
The Normans
Following their success at the Battle
of Hastings in 1066 the Normans, themselves the
descendants of Vikings who had settled in France,
sought to impose Norman rule throughout England
and Wales.
French was spoken by the Court and the
nobility and became the language of the English
Parliament for the next 300 years
and one way to
demonstrate their power was to impose French-
Norman place names. However Old English
remained the language of the people and, just like the
Romans, the Normans left only a small legacy of
place names. It’s probably worth adding that at times
well-established names were subtly changed because
the Normans just couldn’t get their tongues around