Fortified towns – the Saxons built 'burhs' to ward off the Viking threat, and 'borough', 'burgh' and 'bury' all relate to the original Old English. River mouths – 'mutha' means mouth, which gives us Exmouth, Plymouth, Yarmouth and so on.
The geographical use of “-bury” and “Bury” is derived from burg or burh, Old English for a town or fortified place, while the verb “bury” comes from byrgan, an Old English verb meaning to raise a mound, cover, or inter.
In English it is borough and more commonly “bury”. Marlborough, Middlesbrough, Scarborough, Attleborough, Loughborough, Borough, Peterborough. Bury St Edmunds, Newbury, Amesbury, Canterbury, Salisbury, Bury, Shaftesbury, Glastonbury, Malmesbury.
Meaning farm or homestead, "ham" is featured in hundreds of place names across England and is derived from the Old English of the Anglo Saxons. Places ended with "ham" are especially concentrated in Norfolk and Suffolk, where the Angles invaded and settled.
“Shire” is just the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the old French word “county”, so Yorkshire, for example, means “County of York”. A couple of them you have to manipulate a bit, presumably because Lancastershire and Chestershire were a bit of a mouthful; but it's still fairly obvious where the name came from.
Meaning:Fortress, camp, camp of soldiers. Chester is a boy's name of English and Latin origin. This classic-sounding name can be spotted as a nickname of Rochester or a given name in its own right, which translates to "fortress," "camp," or "camp of soldiers," contributing to its old-world style.
The borough is made up of six towns – Bury, Ramsbottom, Tottington, Radcliffe, Whitefield and Prestwich – and is one of ten councils that make up the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
The word hamlet is loosely derived from the Old French 'ham' which translates as home – the perfect roots for a word which describes a settlement in which everyone is sure to know each other.
The name Bury, Buri and Byri comes from the Saxon and means "a stronghold". In ancient times it is thought that the whole area was probably forest, marsh and moorland inhabited by nomadic herdsmen.
In the German language, Burg means 'castle' or 'fortress', though so many towns grew up around castles that it almost came to mean city, and is incorporated into many placenames, such as Hamburg, Flensburg and Strasburg.
Hammersmith may mean "(Place with) a hammer smithy or forge", although, in 1839, Thomas Faulkner proposed that the name derived from two 'Saxon' words: the initial Ham from ham and the remainder from hythe, alluding to Hammersmith's riverside location.
A borough is a town that has its own government. It also can be a part of a big city that has powers of self-government. Manhattan is just one of the five boroughs that make up New York City. When a borough is part of a big city, it represents a more formal division than just a neighborhood.
Just a short tram ride away from Manchester, this lively town mixes independent markets, brilliant food, rich history, and stunning countryside - all with that classic Northern charm. Famous for its world-renowned Bury Market (and yes, Black Pudding), this town is much more than just a shopping stop.
After looking into the continental origins of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, he notes that the land earlier called Britannia had taken its present name Anglia from one of the victorious invaders, the Angli : «Britannia is now called Anglia, taking the name of the victors ».
The name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon suffix -wīc, signifying "a dwelling or fortified place". Such settlements were usually coastal and many have left material traces found during excavation.
The suffix -shire is attached to most of the names of English, Scottish and Welsh counties. It tends not to be found in the names of shires that were pre-existing divisions. Essex, Kent, and Sussex, for example, have never borne a -shire, as each represents a former Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
"Salop is an old abbreviation for Shropshire, which comes from the Anglo-French Salopesberia," said local historian Keith Pybus. Salop was was also a Latin name for the county town, Shrewsbury, which also shares the motto of Floreat Salopia, which means let Shrewsbury, or Shropshire, flourish."
And this convention in English, that 'ham,' it essentially means a village. This place is a village, a place where people live. And to take it a step further that H-A-M, ham itself, in old English means 'home,' which is why it sort of doubles to mean village as well. So that word ham actually means home.
In the Middle Ages, boroughs were settlements in England that were granted some self-government; burghs were the Scottish equivalent. In medieval England, boroughs were also entitled to elect members of parliament. The use of the word borough probably derives from the burghal system of Alfred the Great.
