Note E. p. . The Changes in Nomenclature produced by the Danish Settlement

Mr. Kemble has gone (Saxons in England, i. 77–84) very minutely into the subject of the old divisions of England, and he has collected a great number of names, some of which can be easily identified, while others can only be guessed at and some are quite hopeless. But it is plain (see Kemble, i. 78, 79) that the West-Saxon names, Wilsætas, Sumorsætas, Dornsætas, are all older than Ælfred’s time, while the names of the present Mercian shires are later than Ælfred, and have supplanted earlier names, as appears from Mr. Kemble’s list of old Mercian shires (i. 81), some of which are quite unintelligible. One or two very obvious instances will be enough for my purpose. Thus the principality of the Hwiccas has long formed two whole shires, Worcester and Gloucester, and part of another, Warwick. The Magesætas seem to be divided between Herefordshire and Shropshire. Lincolnshire contains several principalities, Gainas, Lindisfaras, &c., but the traces of their original independence are not wholly lost even at the present day.

In Wessex most of the shires, Berkshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devonshire, are clearly not called from towns. Somerset and Dorset have cognate towns in Somerton and Dorchester; but they are merely cognate; the shire is not called after the town. But Hampshire, the County of Southampton, is simply Hamtunscír, from the town of Hampton. Hampshire was the first conquest; no doubt it had originally no local name like the other shires, but was simply Westseaxe or Westseaxnarice. When therefore it became a mere shire, it had to take a new name, and was named from the town. It may be asked why the shire which contained the capital was called from the town of Hampton and not from the royal city of Winchester. I can only suggest that some prerogative of the crown or some privilege of the citizens may have kept the capital more distant from the body of the shire than Hampton was.

Wiltshire is a case intermediate between Hampshire and Somerset. The Wilsætas are a tribe, and have their chief town Wilton. But the form Wiltunscír shows that the shire is immediately called from the town, whence the t in the modern form Wiltshire.

In Mercia, on the other hand, all the shires are now called from towns with one, perhaps two exceptions. Shropshire seems to be rather cognate with Shrewsbury than directly derived from it, and alongside of Scrobbesbyrigscír the Scrobsœtas continue to be heard of. Rutland, at once the smallest and the most modern of Mercian shires, is, oddly enough, the only one which has a distinct territorial name, not even cognate with that of any town. Rutland, as a distinct shire, is later than Domesday, where it appears, strangely enough, as a kind of appendage to Nottingham. How it gained the rank of a shire, while the adjoining and larger district of Holland did not, would be an interesting question for local antiquaries.

I have no doubt that the Mercian shires were mapped out afresh after the reconquest. That the redistribution was not made by the Danish invaders is plain from the fact that the boundary laid down between Guthrum and Ælfred is not attended to in marking out the divisions of the shires. We may conceive that the work was begun by Ælfred, or rather perhaps by Æthelred and Æthelflæd in that part of Mercia which was assigned to them by the peace with Guthrum, and that it was further carried on by Eadward the Elder after the recovery of Danish Mercia. In this we may see the groundwork of the legendary belief that Ælfred first divided England into shires and hundreds. With the shires within his own kingdom there was no need to meddle. Gneist (Englische Verwaltungsrecht, i. 56) enlarges on the share of Ælfred in this matter, but leaves out Eadward.

As for the nomenclature of towns and villages, it would seem that places were more commonly named directly after individuals in the course of the Danish Conquest than they had been by the earlier English occupiers. At least, among the names given during the English occupation, those which are formed from the proper name itself are less common than those which are formed from the patronymic ending in -ing. These last again raise the question, how far they are called after historical individuals and how far they are tribe-names called after some mythical patriarch. This last view will be found discussed at length by Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 59 and Appendix A. (See also Comparative Politics, 395.) Names like Tooting, Bensington, Gillingham, give the typical forms. On the other hand (see Kemble’s note, p. ), it should be remembered that this familiar form ing, being so familiar, has often swallowed up others; thus Ethandún, Æbbandún, Huntandún, forms of quite different origin, have been corrupted into Edington, Abingdon, Huntingdon. Birmingham again has been thought to to be a corruption of Bromicham, but Mr. Kemble (i. 457) admits it as a genuine patronymic from the Beormingas. On the other hand, Glæstingabyrig, a genuine patronymic, has been corrupted into Glastonbury, and a wrong derivation given to the name.

An exact parallel to the Danish system of nomenclature is supplied by a later and less known, though very remarkable, settlement of the same kind, the Flemish occupation of Pembrokeshire in the twelfth century. The villages in the Teutonic part of that county bear names exactly analogous to those of Lincolnshire, only ending in the English ton instead of the Danish by. Such are Johnston, Williamston, Herbrandston, and a crowd of others.