Norse place names are the town, farm and island names the Vikings and their descendants left across northern and eastern England and much of Scotland, and you can spot most of them by the ending: -by (farm or village), -thorpe (outlying settlement), -thwaite (clearing), -toft (homestead), -ness (headland) and -wick (bay). Grimsby, Scunthorpe, Bassenthwaite, Lowestoft, Skegness and Lerwick each carry one. In the Northern Isles the Norse layer is almost total: Hugh Marwick estimated that 99% of Orkney’s older place names are Norse, as the UHI Institute for Northern Studies reports.
This guide is part of our Scottish Names collection. Browse the full Scottish Names directory for first names, surnames and Gaelic lists, or start at our Viking names guide for the personal names that sit inside so many of these places.
This is written for anyone who has driven past a sign for Scunthorpe or Kirkwall and wondered what it means, and for family historians whose surname turns out to be a farm in Cumbria. Below: a look-up tool, the Norse endings worth knowing, and the false friends that catch people out (three of them are in this guide’s own title).
Some context first. The Great Heathen Army landed in England in 865, and the area that followed Scandinavian law became known as the Danelaw. In the north of Scotland the story ran longer: Orkney and Shetland were Norse from the 9th century until they were pledged to Scotland in 1468 and absorbed in 1472, and their Norse language, Norn, lingered on until it died out in the 18th century. That is why a map of Lincolnshire is full of -bys and a map of Orkney is wall-to-wall Norse.
Two Scots Abroad · Scottish names
Norse place-name look-up
Type a town, village or island and see its Norse ending. 78 places are checked against their recorded Old Norse forms; for anything else, the 36 element cards show which endings your name could contain.
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How many places have Norse names?
Nearly every place name in Orkney and Shetland, and a large share of the north and east of England. Marwick’s 99% figure is for older Orkney names; when Thomas Huser studied Westray in 2008, setting older as anything before 1800, he put the Norse share somewhere between 36% and 67%, with at least 20% Scots. Berit Sandnes, in a paper published by the University of Aberdeen’s Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ireland, compared medieval settlement names in 11 Orkney parishes with 13 coastal parishes in Norway and found the same favourite endings on both sides of the North Sea.
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Older Orkney place names that are Norse | 99% (Hugh Marwick’s estimate) | UHI Institute for Northern Studies |
| Westray names that are Norse (names before 1800) | 36% to 67%; at least 20% Scots | Thomas Huser (2008), via UHI |
| Medieval Orkney settlement names built on a landscape word | 85 of 225 (38%) | Berit Sandnes |
| Same measure in 13 Norwegian coastal parishes | 149 of 256 (58%) | Berit Sandnes |
| Top landscape endings in the Orkney sample | nes 15.3%, haugr 12.9%, dalr 9.4%, klettr 7.1%, vík 5.8% | Berit Sandnes |
| Top landscape endings in the Norwegian sample | vík 12.1%, nes 8.7%, ey 8.7%, vágr 7.3%, dalr 4.7% | Berit Sandnes |
| Thwaite names in Cumberland | about 80 (Westmorland at least 30, Lancashire about 40) | Wikipedia, Thwaite (placename element) |
| Thwaite names in the East Riding of Yorkshire | 3 (Nottinghamshire 7) | Wikipedia, Thwaite (placename element) |
In England, the endings in this guide cluster in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, the East Midlands and the North West. The University of Nottingham notes that -by is the commonest Scandinavian element in the East Midlands, usually joined to a Norse personal name. In Scotland, the history of Scandinavian Scotland records an almost complete replacement of older names in the Outer Hebrides, Coll, Tiree and Islay, but no Norse place names on the northern mainland south of Beauly.
How a Norse place name is built
Most Norse names are two parts: a specific, which picks out this place, and a generic, which says what kind of place it is. Stromness is the textbook case: straum (tidal stream) plus nes (headland). If every headland were simply called Ness, as Sandnes points out, nobody could find anything. Once you know the generic, half the name is solved.
| Pattern | How it works | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Personal name + generic | The owner or founder plus the kind of settlement | Scunthorpe (Skuma’s homestead), Whitby (Hvíta’s farmstead), Lowestoft (Hlothver’s homestead) |
| Landscape word + generic | What the place looked like | Askrigg (ash ridge), Sedbergh (flat-topped hill), Lerwick (clay bay) |
| Generic on its own | Only one place nearby could carry the plain name | Wick, Uig, Twatt, Thwaite, Skaill |
| Norse name + English ending | A Scandinavian owner’s farm named with Old English -ton | Gonalston (Gunnolf), Rolleston in Nottinghamshire (Hroaldr) |
| Older name + Norse ending | Norse speakers tacked their word onto an existing name | Caithness (headland of the Catt people), possibly Durness |
Spelling drift does the rest. Kirkwall was Kirkjuvágr, church bay, and was still written Kirkevaag in 1525; nobody is sure how the second half turned into wall. Lerwick kept its shape better and still matches Leirvik in Norway and Leirvík in the Faroes, all three meaning bay of clay.
Hugh Marwick sorted Orkney endings into layers: býr first, then bólstaðr, garðr and land, then setr and kví after about 900. Sandnes warns that his date for the last layer rests on a saga tax story historians reject. What is safe: names with þveit are older than about 1200, and bister and staðir names almost certainly go back to the Norse period, while garth and quoy stayed in local use and kept being coined for centuries.
The Norse endings, one by one
These are the endings you will meet most, roughly in the order of a road trip from Lincolnshire to Unst.
-by, -bie
Means: farm, village. Old Norse: býr. Where: England and Scotland. Examples: Grimsby, Derby, Whitby, Wetherby, Kirkby, Scrooby; Lockerbie.
The big one. The Nottingham exhibition on the Danelaw gives Scrooby as Skropi’s farm or homestead, and the pattern repeats across the map: Derby is Djúra-bý, village of the deer; Whitby is Hvítabýr, Hvíta’s farmstead; Wetherby joins veðr, a wether or castrated ram, to býr. Grimsby’s Grim is a folk hero in the medieval Lay of Havelock the Dane, which historians treat as a story rather than a record. Kirkby simply means church village. It crosses the border too: Lockerbie began as Loc-hard’s by. The personal names inside these places are in our male Viking names list.
-thorpe, -thorp
Means: outlying or secondary settlement, hamlet. Old Norse: þorp. Where: England. Examples: Scunthorpe, Mablethorpe, Cleethorpes, Gunthorpe.
A thorpe was the overspill farm, an outlying settlement from an older one. Scunthorpe turns up in Domesday Book in 1086 as Escumesthorpe, from Skumasþorp, Skuma’s homestead, and Mablethorpe is Malbert’s secondary settlement. The catch, flagged on the Thorp page: Old English had þrop, so -thorpe names in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk are usually Norse, while the -throp and -thrope names from Worcestershire to Surrey (Adlestrop, Southrope) are English. Gunthorpe in Nottinghamshire carries a woman’s name, Gunnhildr, and East Midlands Vikings notes that female names are rare in the region’s place names; our female Viking names page has the rest of her family.
-thwaite, Twatt
Means: clearing, meadow or paddock. Old Norse: þveit. Where: England and Scotland. Examples: Bassenthwaite, Thwaite, Thornthwaite, Slaithwaite; Twatt (Orkney and Shetland).
Þveit, a clearing or meadow, is the Lake District ending: Bassenthwaite is Bastun’s clearing, with an Anglo-French nickname meaning stick in front of the Norse word. The Norse never recorded þveit as an everyday word in writing, so its exact sense is unknown, but Sandnes notes that names coined with it must be older than about 1200. In Orkney and Shetland the same word survives as Twatt, which is a perfectly respectable farm name in the isles, whatever visitors think when they first see the sign.
-toft
Means: homestead. Where: England. Examples: Lowestoft, Langtoft, Fishtoft.
A toft was a homestead. Lowestoft in Suffolk is Hlothver’s homestead, a Norse personal name plus toft, and Langtoft and Fishtoft follow the same pattern. The two Langtofts, one in Lincolnshire and one in the East Riding of Yorkshire, show how the same name was coined twice in different corners of Viking England.
kirk-, -kirk
Means: church. Old Norse: kirkja. Where: England and Scotland. Examples: Ormskirk, Kirkby, Kirkby Stephen; Kirkwall, Kirkoswald, Halkirk.
Kirk is the Nordic-influenced word for church that Scots still use. Ormskirk is Orm’s church, from the personal name Ormr, meaning snake. Kirkwall is church bay. Dumfries and Galloway has a run of kirk plus saint names, like Kirkoswald, which the history of Scandinavian Scotland reads as a sign of a mixed Gaelic and Norse population. The trap: in parts of Scotland, kirk is an English translation of a Gaelic word for church, and Kirkbuddo in Angus is not about a church at all but Gaelic cathair, a fort.
-ness
Means: headland (literally nose). Old Norse: nes. Where: England and Scotland. Examples: Skegness, Holderness; Stromness, Caithness, Durness, Esha Ness.
Nes means headland, literally nose, and it is the single commonest landscape ending in Sandnes’s sample of medieval Orkney farm names at 15.3%. Skegness is either Skeggi’s headland or a beard-shaped one; Skeggi itself means bearded one. Caithness is the Norse Katanes, headland of the Catt people, so a Pictish tribe sits inside a Norse name. Durness may be Dyrnes, deer headland, or a Gaelic name with ness tacked on; nobody agrees. Old English had the same word, so a -ness in southern England is not automatically Norse.
-wick, Uig, -vik
Means: bay. Old Norse: vík. Where: Scotland mainly. Examples: Wick, Lerwick, Uig, Brodick, Port Askaig.
Vík is a bay, and the word is linked to viking itself. Wick in Caithness, Uig on Lewis and Lerwick (bay of clay) are all vík names. Brodick on Arran is breda-vick, broad bay, and Port Askaig on Islay is ask-vík, ash tree bay. In England, though, be careful: Old English had its own wic, an outlying farm, which the Wick surname descends from, so an English -wick needs an early spelling before you call it Norse. In Shetland, wick, geo and voe are all everyday words for an inlet.
-wall, -way (bay)
Means: bay, narrow bay. Old Norse: vágr. Where: Scotland. Examples: Kirkwall, Pierowall, Stornoway.
Vágr is a bay too, often a narrower one, and it makes up 7.3% of the landscape endings in Sandnes’s Norwegian sample. In Orkney it became wall: Kirkwall from Kirkjuvágr, and Pierowall in Westray, which in Norse times was simply Hofn, harbour. The history of Kirkwall quotes the antiquarian F. W. L. Thomas asking exactly how vágr could turn into wall, and whence came the ll, and the honest answer is still a shrug. Stornoway on Lewis is Stjórnavágr, founded by Vikings in the early 9th century.
-dale, -dal
Means: valley. Old Norse: dalr. Where: England and Scotland. Examples: Langdale; Helmsdale, Rendall.
Dalr means valley. Helmsdale in Sutherland was Hjalmundal, dale of the helmet; Rendall in Orkney was Rennudalr. Dalr is the third commonest landscape ending in the Orkney sample at 9.4%, and Norway has the same word in the farm surname Dahl. The false friend: Old English also had -dale, so Tweeddale in the Scottish Borders is English, not Norse.
-ay, -ey, -a
Means: island. Old Norse: ey. Where: Scotland mainly. Examples: Westray, Sanday, Rousay, Gairsay, Stronsay, Eday, Raasay, Jura.
Ey means island, and it is how the Orkney map reads: Westray (west island), Sanday (sand island), Rousay (Hrolf’s island), Gairsay (Gárekr’s isle), Stronsay (the good fishing and farming island). Papa Westray, Papey hin Meiri, is the big island of the papar. Not every reading is settled: Egilsay is either Egil’s island or, if a Gaelic church word is hiding in it, church island. Further south, Jura was Dýrey, deer island, and Raasay is roe deer or possibly horse island. Our Shetland and Orkney names guide covers the people who lived on them.
Aith, -a, -grind
Means: isthmus. Old Norse: eið. Where: Scotland. Examples: Eday, Aith, Hoxa, Scapa, Mavis Grind.
An eið is an isthmus, a neck of land between two waters, and Orkney is full of them. Eday is isthmus island; Aith appears on Walls, Stronsay and the west Mainland; Hoxa on South Ronaldsay was Haugeið and Scapa was Skálpeið. Shetland’s best is Mavis Grind (say MAY-veess GRINND), Mæfeiðs grind, the gate of the narrow isthmus, said to be the only place in the UK where you can toss a stone across land from the North Sea to the Atlantic.
-bister, -bost, -bus, -ster
Means: farm, settlement. Old Norse: bólstaðr. Where: Scotland. Examples: Kirkbister, Swanbister, Leurbost, Shawbost, Scrabster.
Bólstaðr, a farm, is the ending that changes its clothes most often: bister in Orkney and Shetland (Kirkbister, Swanbister), bost on Lewis (Leurbost, Shawbost), bus on Islay, and ster in Caithness (Scrabster). Sandnes calls it rare in Norway but immensely popular in the Northern Isles, and some Scottish scholars have used bister names to map the limits of Norse settlement. She warns against that: many of the oldest farms have landscape names, so a missing bister proves nothing.
-howe, -how
Means: mound, hill. Old Norse: haugr. Where: England and Scotland. Examples: Howe (Norfolk), Howe (North Yorkshire), Tarn Hows; Maeshowe, Hoxa.
Haugr means mound, and it is the second commonest landscape ending in the Orkney sample at 12.9%. Maeshowe is read by Sandnes as the mound in the meadow, and its runic graffiti, left by Norse visitors, is about 860 years old. In England, Howe in Norfolk and Howe in North Yorkshire are both haugr names, and Tarn Hows in the Lake District joins tjǫrn, small lake, to haugr.
Ting-, Ding-, Tyn-
Means: assembly field. Old Norse: þingvǫllr. Where: England, Scotland and Man. Examples: Thingwall (Wirral); Tingwall (Shetland), Dingwall, Tynwald (Isle of Man).
Þingvǫllr, assembly field, is where the Norse held their law meetings, and it survives in four corners of these islands: Tingwall in Shetland (say TING-wəl), Dingwall in Ross-shire, Thingwall on the Wirral and Tynwald on the Isle of Man, where it is still the name of the parliament. All four are the same name as Þingvellir in Iceland.
The rest of the Norse toolkit
A handful of smaller endings fill in the map, and the look-up has a card for each: setter and -sta or -ston (setr, seat; staðir, places) on island farms; quoy (kví, enclosure), still being coined for 19th-century crofts like Quoy Sinclair; force (foss, waterfall) in Aira Force and High Force; fell (mountain); -rigg (ridge), as in Askrigg, the ash ridge; -gate (gata, street) in Nottingham’s Fletcher Gate; firth (fjǫrðr, sea inlet), as in the Pentland Firth, read as Pictland fjord; geo (gjá, a cleft in a cliff), as in Staxigoe, inlet of the stack; and á, river, hiding in Thurso (Thor’s river) and Laxey on the Isle of Man (salmon river). Thor and the rest of the gods are in our Norse mythology names guide.
Norse place names that became surnames
Plenty of family names started as a place someone came from. Braithwaite is an English surname of Old Norse origin, and in the 1881 census it was 37.3 times more common than the British average in Westmorland. Ormsby comes from places in Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire and Norfolk named for a man called Ormr. In Norway, farm names became surnames wholesale: Dahl (valley), Berg (hill), Haugen (mound), Moen (meadow), Rud (clearing) and Vik (bay), with Wiik and Wiig each carried by well over a thousand people, according to the Scandinavian family name history.
Scotland has the same habit with a Gaelic twist; our guide to Scottish surnames from places covers the Lowland and Highland side, and our Scottish Norse last names page picks up the island families. For the -son and -sen side of the story, see Viking surnames and Norse last names.
How to work out if a place name is Norse
You need patience, not a degree in Old Norse.
- Start with the ending, because the generic is the easiest half. Run the name through the look-up above and note which endings it could contain.
- Find the oldest spelling you can, because modern spellings lie. Scunthorpe only makes sense once you see Escumesthorpe in Domesday Book; Kirkwall only makes sense once you see Kirkevaag.
- Check the region, because the same ending means different things in different places. A -thorpe in Lincolnshire is probably Norse, one in Surrey probably is not; a -wick in Shetland is a bay, one in the Midlands may well be an English farm.
- Look at the first half, because a Norse personal name (Skuma, Hvíta, Ormr, Gunnhildr) is the clincher. If the first half is Gaelic or English, you may have a hybrid.
- Ask locally, because, as the Shetland Amenity Trust says, local pronunciation can reveal the root word.
If you cannot find an early spelling, the honest answer is “probably Norse”, not “Norse”. There is no shame in that: everyone who has tried to decode their own village’s name has been confidently wrong at least once, usually in front of a relative.
Watch out for: the five look-alikes. -wick in England can be Old English wic, an outlying farm. -thorpe south of a line from Worcestershire to Surrey is usually Old English þrop. -dale can be English, as in Tweeddale. -ey in the south (Romsey, Ely) is Old English for island, and -hay or -ey can be Old English for an enclosure. Kirk in Scotland can translate Gaelic, and Kirkbuddo is not a church at all.
Quick list: 78 Norse place names and what they mean
| Place | Old Norse | Meaning | Element | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aira Force | eyrr + á + foss | waterfall of the river at the gravel bank | force, foss | Cumbria |
| Arnish | not recorded | eagle headland | -ness | Raasay |
| Askrigg | askr + hryggr | ridge where ash trees grew | -rigg | North Yorkshire |
| Aysgarth | garðr | an enclosure name | -garth | North Yorkshire |
| Bassenthwaite | Bastun + þveit | Bastun’s clearing | -thwaite, Twatt | Cumbria |
| Birsay | Byrgisey | fort island (the Brough of Birsay) | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Brodick | breda-vick | broad bay | -wick, Uig, -vik | Arran |
| Brora | not recorded | river with a bridge | -a, -o (river) | Sutherland |
| Caithness | Katanes | headland of the Catt people | -ness | Highland |
| Cleethorpes | Clee + thorp | the thorps (villages) of Clee | -thorpe, -thorp | Lincolnshire |
| Derby | Djúra-bý | village of the deer | -by, -bie | Derbyshire |
| Dingwall | Þingvǫllr | field or meeting place of the thing | Ting-, Ding-, Tyn- | Ross-shire |
| Durness | Dyrnes (possibly) | possibly deer headland; disputed | -ness | Sutherland |
| Eday | Eiðøy | isthmus island | Aith, -a, -grind | Orkney |
| Egilsay | Egilsey | disputed: Egil’s island, or church island | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Fitty Hill | viti | beacon hill | Ward, Wart | Westray, Orkney |
| Gairsay | Gáreksey | Gárekr’s isle | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Golspie | not recorded | gully village | other | Sutherland |
| Gonalston | Gunnolf + tún | Gunnolf’s farm | Norse name + -ton | Nottinghamshire |
| Grimsby | Grim + býr | Grim’s farm or village; folklore makes Grim a Danish fisherman | -by, -bie | Lincolnshire |
| Gunthorpe | Gunnhildr + thorpe | Gunnhild’s outlying settlement | -thorpe, -thorp | Nottinghamshire |
| Harrogate | hǫrgr + gata | possibly road to the cairn | -gate | North Yorkshire |
| Helmsdale | Hjalmundal | dale of the helmet | -dale, -dal | Sutherland |
| Holderness | hold + nes | possibly headland of the hold (a Danish noble title) | -ness | East Yorkshire |
| Hoxa | Haugeið | mound isthmus | Aith, -a, -grind | South Ronaldsay, Orkney |
| Jura | Dýrey | deer island | -ay, -ey, -a | Inner Hebrides |
| Kirkby | kirkja + býr | church village | -by, -bie | Merseyside |
| Kirkby Stephen | kirkju-býr | village with a church | -by, -bie | Cumbria |
| Kirkwall | Kirkjuvágr | church bay | -wall, -way (bay) | Orkney |
| Langdale | lang + dale | long valley | -dale, -dal | Cumbria |
| Laxey | Laxa | salmon river | -a, -o (river) | Isle of Man |
| Lerwick | leir + vík | bay of clay | -wick, Uig, -vik | Shetland |
| Leurbost | bólstaðr | a bost (farm) name | -bister, -bost, -bus, -ster | Lewis |
| Lockerbie | Loc-hard’s by | Lockard’s farm or town | -by, -bie | Dumfriesshire |
| Lowestoft | Hlothver + toft | Hlothver’s homestead | -toft | Suffolk |
| Mablethorpe | malbertþorp | Malbert’s secondary settlement | -thorpe, -thorp | Lincolnshire |
| Maeshowe | mað + haugr | the mound in the meadow | -howe, -how | Orkney |
| Mavis Grind | Mæfeiðs grind | gate of the narrow isthmus | Aith, -a, -grind | Shetland |
| Noltland | naut + land | cattle land | other | Westray, Orkney |
| Ormskirk | Ormres kirkja | Orm’s church (ormr means snake) | kirk-, -kirk | Lancashire |
| Papa Westray | Papey hin Meiri | big island of the papar | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Pentland Firth | fjǫrðr | Pictland fjord | firth | Caithness and Orkney |
| Pierowall | Hofn, later vágr | the -wall is vágr, bay; in Norse times it was Hofn, harbour | -wall, -way (bay) | Westray, Orkney |
| Port Askaig | ask-vík | ash tree bay | -wick, Uig, -vik | Islay |
| Quoyness | kví + nes | enclosure + headland | Quoy-, -quoy | Sanday, Orkney |
| Raasay | Rásey or Hrossey | roe deer island, or possibly horse island | -ay, -ey, -a | Inner Hebrides |
| Ramsey | hrams-á | wild garlic river | -a, -o (river) | Isle of Man |
| Rendall | Rennudalr | a dalr (valley) name | -dale, -dal | Orkney |
| Rolleston | Hroaldr + tún | Hroald’s farm | Norse name + -ton | Nottinghamshire |
| Rousay | Hrólfsey | Hrolf’s island | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Sanday | Sandey | sand island | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Scapa | Skálpeið | an eið (isthmus) name | Aith, -a, -grind | Orkney |
| Scrabster | bólstaðr | a -ster (farm) name | -bister, -bost, -bus, -ster | Caithness |
| Scrooby | Skropi + býr | Skropi’s farm or homestead | -by, -bie | Nottinghamshire |
| Scunthorpe | Skumasþorp | Skuma’s homestead | -thorpe, -thorp | Lincolnshire |
| Sedbergh | setberg | flat-topped hill | -bergh, -berry | Cumbria |
| Shapinsay | Hjálpandisey | possibly helpful island or judge’s island | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Skaill | skáli | hall | Skaill, -scale | Orkney |
| Skegness | Skeggi + nes | Skeggi’s headland, or beard-shaped headland | -ness | Lincolnshire |
| Staxigoe | stakkr + gjá | inlet of the stack | geo, goe | Caithness |
| Stornoway | Stjórnavágr | the -way is vágr, bay | -wall, -way (bay) | Lewis |
| Stromness | Straumnes | headland of the tidal stream | -ness | Orkney |
| Stronsay | Strjónsey | good fishing and farming island | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Sullom | Solheimr | sun settlement | -um, -om | Shetland |
| Tarn Hows | tjǫrn + haugr | tarns by the mound | tarn | Cumbria |
| Thingwall | þing vollr | assembly field | Ting-, Ding-, Tyn- | Wirral |
| Thirsk | þresk | fen or lake | other | North Yorkshire |
| Thurso | Thjórsá, later Thorsá | Thor’s river | -a, -o (river) | Caithness |
| Thwaite | þveit | clearing, meadow or paddock | -thwaite, Twatt | North Yorkshire |
| Tingwall | Þingvǫllr | field of the thing (assembly) | Ting-, Ding-, Tyn- | Shetland |
| Twatt | þveit | clearing | -thwaite, Twatt | Orkney and Shetland |
| Tynwald | Þingvǫllr | assembly field; now the Manx parliament | Ting-, Ding-, Tyn- | Isle of Man |
| Uig | vík | a bay | -wick, Uig, -vik | Lewis |
| Wart Holm | varða + holmr | beacon islet | holm, holme | Westray, Orkney |
| Westray | Vestrey | west island | -ay, -ey, -a | Orkney |
| Wetherby | veðr + býr | wether (ram) farmstead | -by, -bie | West Yorkshire |
| Whitby | Hvítabýr | Hvíta’s farmstead | -by, -bie | North Yorkshire |
| Wick | vík | bay | -wick, Uig, -vik | Caithness |
FAQ about Norse place names
What are Norse place names in England?
Norse place names in England are towns and villages named by Scandinavian settlers, mostly in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, the East Midlands and Cumbria. Look for -by (Grimsby, Derby, Whitby), -thorpe (Scunthorpe), -thwaite (Bassenthwaite), -toft (Lowestoft), -kirk (Ormskirk) and -gate in old street names. Many begin with a Norse personal name, such as Skuma or Hvíta.
What does -by mean in a place name?
The ending -by comes from Old Norse býr and means a farm, homestead or village. It is the commonest Scandinavian place-name element in the East Midlands, according to the University of Nottingham, and usually follows a personal name: Scrooby is Skropi’s farm and Whitby is Hvíta’s farmstead. In Scotland, Lockerbie is a rare -by name.
What does thorpe mean in a place name?
Thorpe means an outlying or secondary settlement, a hamlet that grew from an older village. In the north and east of England it usually comes from Old Norse þorp, as in Scunthorpe (Skuma’s homestead) and Mablethorpe. In southern England, similar names such as Adlestrop come from Old English þrop instead, so the region matters.
Is wick a Norse word?
Sometimes. In Scotland, wick usually comes from Old Norse vík, a bay: Wick, Lerwick and Uig are all vík names, and the word is linked to viking itself. In England, Old English had its own wic, an outlying farm, so an English -wick needs an early spelling checked before you call it Norse.
Why are Orkney and Shetland place names Norse?
Because the islands were Norse for around 600 years. Norse settlers arrived from about 800, named almost every feature of the landscape, and the islands stayed under Norway until they were pledged to Scotland in 1468. Their language, Norn, lingered for centuries, so most Orkney and Shetland place names still have Old Norse roots.
Final thoughts on Norse place names
If you remember four endings, make them -by, -thorpe, -ness and -wick, and remember that the last one changes meaning at the border. With those, a road atlas of northern England or the Northern Isles starts reading like a land register written a thousand years ago.
The best way to see it is on the ground: Orkney and Shetland are where the Norse names are thickest, and our round-up of the best Scottish islands to visit covers how to get there. Take the look-up tool with you, and do not be surprised when a farm called Twatt turns out to be older than 1200.
Sources
- Berit Sandnes, Linguistic patterns in the place-names of Norway and the Northern Isles (FRLSU, University of Aberdeen, 2010)
- UHI Institute for Northern Studies, Cracking the place-name puzzle (Westray study and Marwick’s 99% estimate)
- University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections, Danelaw Saga: Arrival and Settlement
- East Midlands Vikings, Viking Names
- Shetland Amenity Trust, About Place Names
- Wikipedia, List of elements in place names in the British Isles
- Wikipedia, Thwaite (placename element)
- Wikipedia, Scandinavian Scotland
- Wikipedia, Orkney (1468 pledge and 1472 absorption)
- Wikipedia, Braithwaite (surname), 1881 census distribution
- Wikipedia, Scandinavian family name etymology (Norwegian farm-name surnames)
