In one of her articles entitled ‘Historical Linguistics – Linguistic Archaeology’ the late historical linguist Cecily Clark says that ‘linguistic phenomena can be to socio-cultural historians much as artefacts are to archaeologists’ and adds that especially rich testimony to socio-cultural history is offered by name-material.I In her comments on the use of place-names as historical evidence she remarks that some place-names are seemingly transparent like Ashford and Blackheath, but being unintelligible today like London and York does not disable names. In fact freedom from sense is a characteristic of their onomastic function. Nevertheless they were once created out of elements taken from ordinary language.

East Anglia has been submerged by several linguistic invasions, as is testified for instance by river-names of British and settlements-names of Scandinavian origin. Still the majority of the settlement-names are English, although in some cases the word behind a name may have died out long ago. Then the Old English form and meaning can usually be established through etymological research. Many words used in the creation of names, which do not occur in modern Standard English, may have survived for a long time in the local dialect. The historical study of place-names can also be used for throwing light on the extent of linguistic and cultural affiliations such as the French and other continental impacts.

The late O.K. Schram published an excellent brief survey of the place-names of Norfolk in 1961. This was based on a selection of the major names, i.e. those of parishes, villages and some of the larger hamlets, as representative as possible. The present survey will also have to be selective, but nevertheless different, for a lot has happened in toponymic research since 1961. New theories have been put forward concerning the oldest English settlement names and the Scandinavian names, there has been a re-appraisal of some evidence for Celtic survival, and field-names have been explored for some areas to an extent which they had not thirty-nine years ago.

Celtic or Pre-Celtic

Let us look at the linguistic invasions in chronological order. The oldest about which something meaningful can be said is usually the Celtic impact, noticeable mainly through a number of Celtic river-names.