Old Baghdad in Hertfordshire

Who would have thought of Harrow as ‘the heathen temple’ or suburban Penge as Celtic pen ced, ‘head of the wood’? This new dictionary, the better part of 20 years in the making, re-enchants the prosaic and gives historical resonance to the timelessly English. We are reminded of the mixed Celtic, Roman, Scandina- vian, Germanic and other roots of what came to be England, and given Contin- ental and Indo-European parallels for English place-names. It tells the history of the landscape and of those who owned and worked on it, and is an invaluable companion to books like W. G. Hoskins’s classic Making of the English Landscape and Oliver Rackham’s History of the English Countryside.

Take names of British Celtic origin. Catterick, for instance, appears in Ptolemy’s Greek (c. 150) as Katourak- tonion, from the British ‘place of the battle ramparts’ (not, as used to be thought, ‘cataract’), while Kent, Cantium in Caesar, is ‘corner land’ or ‘edge land’ and Berk- shire derives ultimately from Brit. barraco, ‘hilly’ (viz. the B. Downs). Branodunum, from Brit. bran, ‘raven’, or the mythological hero Bran, becomes Brancaster, ‘Roman fort where broom grows’ (cf. Brandon), while Creake (Norf.) is primitive Welsh creig, ‘rock’, a witness to the former presence of the British (called Welsh, ‘foreigners’, by the English) throughout the land.

Churchill (Devon, Oxon, Worcs) is from pr.W. crug, ‘hill’ — in effect, ‘hill hill’ rather than ‘church hill’ (the English were not to know what ‘crug’ meant, and heard it simply as a place-name). A close parallel is Chetwode (Bucks), ‘wood wood’, from pr.W. ced, seen also in Chatham. British river-names include Brent (Gtr. Lon.), ‘holy river’, Dee (Ches.), ‘goddess’ (Deua), Ock (Oxon), ‘salmon river’ (W. eog) and Mite (Cumb.) from root meigh, ‘to urinate’.