Publisher's Synopsis
The names of our towns and villages often provide insights into their origins and history. The problem is that the Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans have all left their mark on the place-names of these islands and the mingling of their languages and the linguistic changes over the centuries have often obscured the original roots and led to misinterpretation.;This work by John Field unravels these mysteries. It shows how a linguistic analysis of place-names can contribute to our understanding of the past, whether of a city, a hamlet or a geographical feature. What emerges is that things are not always what they seem, and that some of the places we thought we knew have interestingly unusual origins.;The book is organized in an A-Z dictionary form and annotated to give the precise linguistic origins as well as the meaning of each place-name.
