All those names of Britain towns have a history hidden. Celtic tribes that arrived during the Iron Age, which started around 800BC, were the first to give a clear linguistic contribution that has lasted to modern times. They came in groups from the continent; some spoke Goidelic (the source of Gaelic), while the others spoke Brittonic.
Nowadays, many of the rivers and hills that which are in Britain are original of the Celts like Avon, Derwent, Severn, Tees, Trent, Tyne... It is also possible that some of these names could may originate before the Celts. The River Tame, comes from the Celtic for ‘dark one’ or ‘river’ as does the River Thames.
Thanks to the Anglo-Saxons, Celtic influence did not arrived to the south and east as much as arrived to north and west. For example, Much Wenlock: it gets its Much is from Anglo-Saxon mycel, meaning ‘great’ or ‘much’. Wenlock comes from Celtic wininicas, ‘white area’, and the Anglo-Saxon loca, ‘place’.
The Romans invaded Britain too, even before the Anglo-Saxons. But they failed to influence the culture. A different part of Roman buildings, the most outstanding comes from the Latin castra (‘fort’). Taken into Anglo-Saxon, it became ceaster (‘town, city’, pronounced rather like ‘che-aster’) – which has mutated to chester (Chester, Manchester), caster (Lancaster, Doncaster) and cester (Leicester, Cirencester). As these there are many more examples.
Vocabulary
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