Hi List, I'd just like to say that naming people after significant locations certainly happens. My own brother and my grandson are both called Antony ( no h) specifically after the village in Cornwall where my mother was born. Other examples of place names used as first names are Lerryn and Landulph, so it's quite a common practice, and logic would suggest that anyone from the next village or town could be labelled by the name of that place and end up with it as a surname? Linda in Long Eaton ( surname Rowland, maybe from the Derbyshire village?)