What’s in a place name?

There is a place in Westmorland called Wordsworth’s Well, but I must tell you that it is not named after me. A field in Westmorland is called Wordy Dolt, and I am glad to tell you that it is not named after me either. Here wordy (like –worthy elsewhere) means ‘enclosure’, not ‘voluble’ nor indeed ‘valuable’, and dolt means ‘share of the common field’, not ‘idiot’. I discovered this from the glorious English Place-Name Society. I call it glorious because it has been going for 100 years and is still pegging away at a survey recording and analysing historically all the place-names of England. So far 91 volumes have been published, yet some counties remain to be surveyed.

In its long labour it resembles other great British endeavours like the Dictionary of National Biography, the Survey of London or the Oxford English Dictionary.

In 1924 the English Place-Name Society published its first two volumes Introduction to the Survey and Chief Elements Used in English Place-Names.