Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/46

 the name of Earl Alan's castle in Yorkshire, and afterwards of the town that grew up around it, gave, many centuries later, the title of an earldom to Henry Tudor, who as King Henry VII changed the name of his palace of Shene, in Surrey, to Richmond. Other noteworthy examples of French place-names in England are Grampound (Old French grant pont, great bridge), and Pomfret (pont freit, broken bridge), which is usually written in the latinized form Pontefract (ad pontem fractum), owing to the influence of official documents written in the learned language.

The few local names of French formation had their origin, of course, in the period, extending from the Conquest to the fourteenth century, in which the French language was generally current among certain classes of English society. The rise of new names of native etymology did not cease at the Conquest; it has indeed continued down to the present time. Of the names that were formed in the Middle English and the earlier modern English period, many are no longer intelligible without special study, either because they have undergone contraction or corruption, or because they contain obsolete words or obsolete forms of words still in use. For the interpretation of these names recourse must be had to documentary and linguistic research, according to the methods previously explained in their application to the nomenclature of the earlier periods. I do not propose here to treat of the English names of post-Conquest origin, but it may be worth while, in conclusion, to refer to the 'double-barrelled' names, as they may be called, that abound in our modern gazetteers. Very many of the ancient names of villages, of Old English or Scandinavian origin, happen to be common to a great number of places in different parts of the country. There are, for instance, something like eighty Suttons. To prevent confusion between these namesakes, there has in many instances been added the surname of a family who once held the manor to which the village belonged, as in