bbock, Luebeck, and,
from Italy, Janes, Genes (Genoa), Janaway or Janways, i.e. Genoese,
and Lombard or Lombard. Familiar names of foreign towns were often
anglicized. Thus we find Hamburg called Hamborough, Bruges Bridges,
and Tours Towers.

To the town of Angers we sometimes owe, besides Ainger, the forbidding
names Anger and Danger. In many local names of foreign origin the
preposition de has been incorporated, e.g. Dalmain, d'Allemagne,
sometimes corrupted into Dallman and Dollman, though these are also
for Doleman, from the East Anglian dole, a boundary, Dallison, d'Alenc
on, Danvers, d'Anvers, Antwerp, Devereux, d'Evreux, Daubeney, Dabney,
d'Aubigny, Disney, d'Isigny, etc. Doyle is a later form of Doyley, or
Dolley, for d'Ouilli, and Darcy and Durfey were once d'Arcy and
d'Urfe. Dew is sometimes for de Eu. Sir John de Grey, justice of
Chester, had in 1246 two Alice in Wonderland clerks named Henry de Eu
and William de Ho. A familiar example, which has been much disputed,
is the Cambridgeshire name Death, which some of its possessors prefer
to write D'Aeth or De Ath. Bardsley rejects this, without, I think,
sufficient reason. It is true that it occurs as de Dethe in the
Hundred Rolls, but this is not a serious argument, for we find also de
Daubeney (Chapter XI), the original de having already been absorbed at
the time the Rolls were compiled. This retention of the de is also
common in names derived from spots which have not become recognized
place-names; see Chapter XIV.

But to derive a name of obviously native origin from a place in France
is a snobbish, if harmless, delusion. There are quite enough moor
leys in England without explaining Morley by Morlaix. To connect the
Mid. English nickname Longfellow with Longueville, or the patronymic
Hansom (Chapter III) with Anceaumville, betrays the same belief in
phonetic epilepsy that inspires the derivation of Barber from the
chapelry of Sainte-Barbe. The fact that there are at least three
places, in England called Carrington has not prevented one writer from
seeking the origin of that name in the appropriate locality of
Charenton.

CHAPTER XII. SPOT NAMES

"In ford, in ham, in ley and tun
The most of English surnames run"

(VERSTEGAN).

Verstegan's couplet, even if it be not strictly true, makes a very
good text for a discourse on our local names. The ham, or home, and
the ton, or town, originally an enclosure (cf. Ger. Zaun, hedge),
wer