How to make sense of all those place names in the British Isles

In Britain and Ireland, there are many place names with recurring elements. Obviously these bits of names mean something – but what?

Take the city of Manchester where I lived until I was 23. The ‘chester’ bit, which occurs in other place names, means a camp or fortification especially of Roman origin.

You can find a full guide to these components of place names here.


 




XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>