Gerald,

My source on the "ham" matter is various readings. "Ham" is related, pretty obviously, to "home" and "heim", and I suspect could have just as easily been from West Germanic as Norse. Again, any number of sources seem to attribute "ham" to the Danish invasions. This may be a case (and it would interesting if we were discover otherwise) that the "ham" ending on town names was something that one influential person decided upon, and has been regularly picked up and repeated so often that it has become "common knowledge" (sort of like George Washington and the Cherry Tree). The root is clearly PG and still common in some form to all Germanic languages today.

Erek


--- "Gerald Mcharg" <Gerald.Mcharg@...> wrote:
Eric

I'm not too sure about place-names in 'ham' having a Norse derivation.

I believe that 'ham' is one of the earlier place-name elements to be found in Old English charters of the seventh century; 'tons' as a rule, occur in later charters.
If anyone is interested in this, the authorities to consult are Joliffe, Stenton and Granville.

I haven't really looked at the distribution of 'hams' in Britain, so I can't say whether they predominate in the north. I do know that they occur far less frequently than the 'ton' settlements and that the implications of this could be that they were early administrative or political centres for their respective regions.

Anyhow, if there is a chance for an informed discussion on this, I would like to hear other opinions.

Cheers
Jed Mc Harg


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