Some British Place Names and Their Meanings

If you are feeling bored and would like to try something new, why don’t you open an online map, an atlas, or a map of the United Kingdom—if you have one—and look for some of these place names. Perhaps you will even be able to identify the feature that gave it its name.

A word of caution: these explanations refer to places in the United Kingdom, and some in Ireland.

Although many of the same place names can be found in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, they may not have the original meaning. Those names were given to new towns, settlements or areas that English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish travellers, discoverers and settlers visited or moved to in the last 400 years.

Many people at that time would not have known the original meanings of the names of towns or other places back home. They often used names from their homelands, perhaps to honour a place or a person that the place reminded them of. For example, there may indeed be a hill, a river or other feature.

Have fun exploring!