(no subject)

[oh_meow]

When I was at school (in the UK) there was a geography lesson you were guaranteed to get several times on how you could often tell the origins of a place by its name. It ran something like this:



Roman:
caster/chester/cester - roman camp (ie Manchester)

Viking:
ending in by - town (ie Grimsby)
ending in thorpe - farm (ie Scunthorpe)
ending in vik - bay (ie Jorvik->York /Reykjavik)
ending in dale - valley (ie Rochdale)
ending in thwaite - clearing

Saxon-
ending in ham- farm (ie Chatham)
ending in ing - followers of (ie Reading -where Read's people live)
ending in ton/tun - town (ie Charlton)
ending in ness - headland (ie Inverness / Sheerness)
stoke - settlement (ie Stoke On Trent, Stoke Newington)

Celtic:
starting with aber - river mouth (ie Aberdeen, Aberystwyth)
llan - church
starting with inver- river mouth or where two rivers meet (ie Inverness)
pen - hill (ie Penzance)

There's probably ones I have forgotten there too . .

What are the equivalents for your country?