(Note: Some of the place names used in this story may be offensive to some.)
During our recent visit to beautiful England, we sojourned in a charming little hamlet with an intriguing name.
Upon our return home, I decided to do some research on “interesting” British place names for two reasons.
First, to ascertain that I was not making too much of what might just be a misunderstood name with perfectly innocent origins.
Second, to see if the use of such “interesting” geographical names is commonplace in Britain and, if so, to learn more about the (historical) background of such a tradition.
Well, I hit the jackpot.
While I refer to the name of the hamlet we spent a delightful few days as “interesting” (the name is “Shitterton”), others have different impressions of and perspectives on the names of some British towns, villages, parishes, hamlets, hills, rivers and lakes.
Here are just a few of the numerous stories written on the subject, starting out with the most benign titles:
• “43 Charmingly Odd British Town Names”
• “Amusing (and Strange) UK Place Names”
• “Hilarious UK Place Names That Are Actually Worth A Visit”
• “Funny (or unfortunate) place names in the UK”
• “Britain’s rudest and funniest place names”
• “Ultimate List of Funny and Rude British Place Names”
• “The UK’s 77 rudest place names mapped”
• “Rude, crude and dirty placenames in the UK”
• “These are the UK’s Rudest and Most Obscene Place Names”
Then there is “Next stop, Twatt! My tour of Britain’s fantastically filthy placenames” in a January 2023 article in The Guardian.
So, what are some of these funny, hilarious, rude, crude, dirty, amusing, downright bizarre names, the reader may ask.
Here is a small selection in alphabetical order. To keep the story at a PG-16 rating I have omitted some of the more risqué names:
Babes Well, Durham
Bachelors Bump, Essex
Bareleg Hill, Staffordshire
Bishop’s Itchington, Warwickshire
Bitchfield, Lincolnshire
Blubberhouses, North Yorkshire
Crackpot, North Yorkshire
Crapstone, Devon
Crotch Crescent, Oxford.
Fudgepack upon Humber, Humberside
Great Snoring, Norfolk (and, of course, Little Snoring, also in Norfolk)
Nether Wallop, Hampshire
Peover, Cheshire
Pisshill, Henley-on-Thames
Sandy Balls, the New Forest
Scratch Arse Ware, Dorset
Titty Ho, (a junction of roads in) Northamptonshire
British etymologists, historians and lexicographers have a field day researching and cataloguing the origins and linguistic evolution of these sometimes “extremely rude-sounding” geographical names. They trace some of the names back to Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon or even Celtic times. In some cases, the original meaning of the name has evolved over time, taking on a more vulgar connotation. No escaping the double entendre in several cases.
One of the best-known researchers in this field is Dr. John Baker at the University of Nottingham in England whose “expertise is in name-studies, with particular focus on place-names and their potential as tools for understanding past landscapes and medieval society and culture.”
In the above-mentioned piece at The Guardian, John Lamont cites Baker, “Pare away a millennium of British history…and most of our towns and villages were named for features of the landscape, or a landowner, or an agricultural quirk…The names tended to reflect immediate local circumstances…A particular hill. The condition of the soil.”
Lamont points out Baker’s belief that “we are hardly the first people in history to find ourselves snorting with amusement, or blushing with embarrassment, as placenames become unmoored from their meanings” and gives as an example Belgrave, a district in Leicester, once known as Merdegrave: “…Norman conquerors, arriving in the 11th century, didn’t like the sound of that merde. Why not make the place sound less [shi**y] and call it something beautiful, or belle, instead?”
Remember Bitchfield and Great Cockup, and Scratch Arse ant Titty Ho, and…?
At BBC Countryfile, we learn a little more about the history behind such names:
On Bitchfield:
Originally appearing in the Domesday book as Billesfelt, this small Lincolnshire village forms a parish with Lower Bitchfield. As with many places in Britain, er the centuries its pronunciation and meaning has changed…the moniker initially signified that it was the open land of a man called Bill: Bills-felt. Alternatively, it could be from Old English, meaning Bill referred to a word for sword, synonymous with the description of a sharp ridge or prominent area of land.
BBC Countryfile adds, “So contrary to the modern interpretation suggesting a field of female dogs or unpleasant women, Bitchfield describes and area of open land, belonging to a mystery man by the name of Bill, or simply open land on raised ground.”
Netherthong:
This Yorkshire village is rather simple to decipher: Nether, meaning lower, and thong meaning a thin strip of land rather than a skimpy undergarment. The Nether exists simply to differentiate the village from the nearby Upperthong, which is on higher ground.
Penistone:
…might just be the most suggestively named town in Yorkshire…it’s important to note that Penistone’s name likely has more innocent origins. Theories suggest it comes from Celtic words meaning “hill” and “stone,” a rather unarousing explanation compared to the modern interpretation.
Scratch Arse Ware:
‘Ware‘ is an old English term for rough grazing pasture – as for the rest of the name, you’ll have to fill it in with your imagination.
Titty Ho:
The origin of the name is not definitively documented, but it is likely to have historical or linguistic roots similar to many other quirky English place names.
But how about that idyllic hamlet in beautiful Dorset, with a few dozen historic, whitewashed, thatched cottages — one of them our home away from home for a while (below) — with an “interesting” name dating back at least 1,000 years to Anglo-Saxon times?
The Institute for Names-Studies at the University of Nottingham maintains a guide to the interpretation of 14,000 names of England’s cities towns and villages.
This is their interpretation of the name Shitterton:
A sewer, a stream used as a sewer. LATER: The farm at Shitter.
Elements and their meanings:
• scitere (Old English) Possibly a sewer, a channel or stream used as an open sewer.
• tun (Old English) An enclosure; a farmstead; a village; an estate
The name is even recorded in “The Domesday Book,” a record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of King William the Conqueror. It is recorded in the Book as “Scatera or Scetra, a Norman French rendering of an Old English name derived from the word scite, meaning dung.”
The name alludes to the now-pristine, picturesque stream that flows by the hamlet and eventually flows into the River Piddle. The stream is traversed by rustic little bridges (below) which one can follow on a delightful 15-minute walk to the town of Bere Regis.
As has happened in other British places with “interesting” names, tourists and others have frequently stolen the entrance sign to Shitterton.
Fed-up with having to periodically replace the sign, Shiterton residents in 2010 paid several hundred British Pounds to purchase and install a ton-and-a-half Purbeck stone “sign” proudly engraved with the name of the hamlet (lead image).
The sign still stands and so does the story and the charm of that lovely British hamlet with that “interesting” name.
