Last week a gentle Norfolk waterway got into trouble with Facebook. The problem was its name — Cockshoot Dyke. Facebook’s relentless algorithms blocked posts that mentioned the dyke and issued notifications warning about ‘sexual content’ and ‘violence’.
The name of this stretch of water isn’t, of course, actually rude at all. It relates to a fowl-hunting term for a broad glade through which woodcock might fly. The joy of supposedly ‘rude’ place names lies in their innocence. The village of Upperthong, near Huddersfield, is named after the Old English words uferra (upper) and thwang (a narrow strip of land), while Twatt in Orkney comes from the Old Norse þveit, meaning ‘small piece of land’.
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David Butterfield
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I’ve always felt some affinity for places with unusual names. I grew up in a tiny Shropshire village called Clunton (one letter from trouble).
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