From: Mark Odegard
Message: 1090
Date: 2000-01-24
One English word which has interested me for some time is the English word *town* which was derived from the Anglo-Saxon *tun* meaning a settlement. This word is of course found in thousands of English place-names such as Workington, Darlington, Southampton etc. I believe that the word was used in this context from a very early period of Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now England. What puzzles me is that there does not seem to a corresponding usage in north German,Dutch or Frisian place-names, indeed the word appears to be relatedto the German *Zaun* which means a fence. Did the term originally mean a fence rather than a settlement and does it imply that the Anglo-Saxon settlers surrounded their settlements with fences for defensive purposes perhaps? Maybe it suggests a border or boundary (between landowners ?). Are there any related words in other Germanic and indeed Indo-European languages and if so are they ever used in the English sence of settlement.
The On-line dictionary of postulated non-IE substrate vocabulary in the Germanic languages suggests *dunum could be Celtic. It could also be part of the non-Indo-European substrate in Germanic. Approximately one-third of the ancient Germanic vocabulary is non-IE.English and High German ('Standard German') are relatively distant from each other. English preserves some words (some IE, some non-IE) not otherwise found, even in Dutch, Frisian, or other Low German languages.
The various words for city and town frequently developed from terms for 'enclosed place', 'fortress', 'fenced area'. Even family farmsteads formed some sort of enclosure, often linked with fencing to keep-in or keep-out animals. A town could be nothing more than a few buildings forming a circle around a central open space. When you don't have a word for 'town', using your word for 'enclosure', 'fenced area', 'corral', etc., is an easy semantic extension.
Mark.