On 2006-04-21 10:56, tgpedersen wrote:
> Also, let me remind Piotr of Helsingør, Helsingborg at the throat
> ('hals') of Øresund, Danish udlænding "foreigner",
> morsingbo "inhabitant of the island Mors"
This type is especially common in Old Norse, but not unknown in Britain,
either (also outside the areas of Scandinavian settlement). Indeed,
while ethnic or clan names in -ingas (and placenames based on them)
belong to the early, "heroic" period of Anglo-Saxon, those derived from
"place of residence" continued to be coined in later OE. There are
-ingas group names derived from hydronyms, such as <Avening(s)> from OE
Æfeningas 'men who live on the Avon', and also from other placenames,
like <Bromleaginga mearc> 'boundary of the men of Bromley' or even
<Ealdingtuninga mearce> 'boundary of the men of Ellington' (note the two
-ings in one and the same toponym), or from one of the cardinal
directions, as in <Eastringa tun> (Eastrington) or <Westmoringa land>
'district of men living west of the moors' (Westmoreland). So 'the farm
of the Riverbank-ingas' is not an impossible type of English placename,
but, first, OE *beorm is attested neither as an appellative meaning
'bank/edge...' nor as the name of a river or a region. Secondly, the
vast majority of <-inga ham> placenames in England are derived from clan
names based on monothematic (seldom dithematic) personal names, so the
analysis of DB Bermingeham as 'the settlement of Beorma's men (the
Beormingas)' is entirely unproblematic. Even many of the apparently
obvious counterexamples cases like Wateringbury, Kent, on careful
investigation turn out to be derived from clan names (in this case,
*Ohtheringa burh).
Piotr