The Britain that You don＇t Know-the historical and cultural meaning of British place names.pdfVIP

·研究探讨· The Britain that You don’t Know —the historical and cultural meaning of British place names 武汉大学 外国语言文学学院 翟瑜佳 As products of social interactions between people, place names new kind of language — Anglo-Saxon, that is Old English. However, always represent parts of history and culture of the geographical Danish invasion lasting around 300 years influenced old English entities for they are created by using specific national languages. greatly. We can easily recognize it just from a few particular place Therefore, we should look beyond the names themselves and dig for names. When we see a town name ending with “-by”, we can assert the information behind them. that the place has ever been occupied by Danes for “-by” means The first kind of place names is with the vocabulary components “farm, town, village” in Danish. Besides, there are many place of the Celts. From about 500 BC, the Celts invaded European names containing Norse word “thorp”(village), such as “Althorp” continent and then occupied Britain. They spoke Celtic language, and “Bishopsthorpe”. From a mass of place names with Norse which was the only early language can be found in British with the components in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, we can clearly identify historical records. Today, only a number of place names and river that Danish invasions on those regions were fairly thorough. They names still reserve parts of Celtic vocabulary components. For changed more British place names by their native language than instance, “the Tha