With respect to all, I don't think any of us should get too hung up on identifying the exact origins of place-names. We can never know for an indisputable fact that any -ton or -ck or -wick or -ham or -m or -thorpe or -ing etc was named for a particular individual. All we can say is that it is compatible with such naming. "What else could it be?" is not a proper explanation, and it is not logical. The same applies to surnames, of course. We say that the surname Butcher comes from an ancestor who was a butcher, when we really haven't got the slightest evidence beyond the name itself. Many books are written on name-origins, and they sell in the thousands, and many believe them; but serious students of the topic ought never to lose sight of the fact that the authors are making conclusions and deductions on the shakiest of grounds - and on even shakier logic. I do not believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but the evidence for the assertions was and is infinitely greater than the evidence for the asserted origins of most names. Two thousand years from now, school textbooks will be identifying Saddam with Sodom. Well, and why not? What else could it have meant? The City of Hereford is named for the place where armies forded - according to the assertions of several authors, on the grounds that "here" or similar (I forget) meant "army" back in the Olden Tymes. But it's a guess! My own guess is that the river Wye at that point was called the Arrow, which is an up-stream name for it today. So Hereford was formerly Arrer-ford. That's a guess, too. It will pay us in the long run to be cautious about claiming certainty where none exists by any objective measure. Oxford = Oxes' ford? Oh, please! Gordon Barlow

> Many books are written on name-origins, and they sell in the thousands, and many believe them; but serious students of the topic ought >never to lose sight of the fact that the authors are making conclusions and deductions on the shakiest of grounds - and on even shakier logic. This my be true of popular publications but not so for the on going series by the English Place-Name Society nor work by the "Institute for Name-Studies" at University of Nottingham. Nor for that matter any publication by Gelling or Cameron. The deductions are made from the earliest records of names, far from being made on the shakiest of grounds and logic, they are made by people that have in depth knowledge and understanding the ancient languages used in England. > > The City of Hereford is named for the place where armies forded - according to the assertions of several authors, on the grounds that "here" >or similar (I forget) meant "army" back in the Olden Tymes. But it's a guess! My own guess is that the river Wye at that point was called the >Arrow, which is an up-stream name for it today. So Hereford was formerly Arrer-ford. How then do you account for the spelling in 958 of "Hereford" (ie unchanged), "here" in old english means army no guessing involved. > It will pay us in the long run to be cautious about claiming certainty where none exists by any objective measure. Oxford = Oxes' ford? Oh, please! Unless a student somewhere discovers a hereto unknown alternative meaning of the Old English word "oxna" it cannot have had other meaning in the C10th when it was recorded as Oxnaforda. The study of place names by the Institute can be of great help to historians to gain an understanding of an area and how the landscape has been used and developed. In my experience, corresponding and talking to Dr Paul Cullen the editor for Kent, the Institute will not make any suggestion to meanings of place names they can't relate to one of our languages. The Institute have put a pilot scheme website up http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/ins/ to which it is planned to add all of the main place names of England (the next county to go up will be Kent thanks to funding by Kent Archaeological Society). David Pott