Place Names in Kent

by J. W. Horsley

Lee.—This is a brook rising at Eltham Place, and giving its name to Lee Street and Lee, thence flowing to Lewisham. The more important river Lea on the opposite side of the Thames is called Lygan in the Saxon Chronicle. In Essex also there is the Lea-beck, which shows a Celtic name with a suffix attributable to the Danish marauders whose becks are more common in the north of England. The dropping of the last syllable of Lygan would give the Lee.

Len.—This short tributary of the Medway has been neglected by writers on place-names; but it might be the Celtic Levn, smooth, as in Loch Leven and three rivers of that name in Scotland, besides others in Gloucestershire, Yorks, Cornwall, Cumberland, and Lancashire.

Medway.—The first syllable is adjectival, like the Tam (broad or still) in Tamesa or Thames, and is the Celtic Mwg, vapour, whence our “muggy.” The second is from a varying Celtic root, represented in Welsh by gwy or wy, for water. Most of the river-names from this root are in Wales; but besides the Medway there is the Solway, on the Scottish border, and such names as Weymouth and Weybridge. In the Saxon Chronicle it is spelled Medewægan. Worth recording (if only to discard them) are some derivations given in Ferguson’s River Names. Writing in 1862 (since when some study has been more scientific), he gives the suggestion of the German, Grimm, that the name refers to a cup of mead overturned by a river god! Also that Gibson’s Etymological Geography derives it from the Latin medius because the river flows through the middle of Kent! and this, says Gibson, is the usual acceptation. Ferguson throughout has Sanscrit on the brain, and so refers us to a Sanscrit root, mid, to soften, and thinks it named from its gentle flow. But which of our Kentish rivers are not gentle?

Quaggy.—One of the two brooks at Lewisham. Quag may be the same as Quag in quagmire, and the second syllable the Anglo-Saxon “ea” for water or river, cognate with the old High German “aha” and the Latin “aqua.” In Rosetti’s poem we find “I fouled my feet in quag-water.”

Ravensbourne.—When Teutonic colonists or invaders, dispossessing the Celts, inquired the name of a stream, they took the Celtic word to be a proper instead of a common name, and so added their own name for water or river. Later, when the English tongue was evolved, “water” was sometimes added to the Celtic, or Celtic-plus-Saxon, name. Thus, in Wansbeck-water, Wan is Alfon and Evon; S is a vestige of the Gadhelic visge; Beck is the Norse addition; and Water the later English when it was forgotten what Wansbeck meant. Thus our present name means River-water-river-water! So Ravensbourne (interpreted inanely in a Lewisham print by a legend of a raven and a bone) is really the Celtic Avon, with the Saxon addition of Bourne, so common in Kent for stream.

Rother.—A mainly Sussex stream which forms part of the boundary of Kent. It is said to be the Celtic Rhud-dwr—that is Red Water.

Stour.—There are other rivers of this name in Suffolk, Dorset, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, besides the Stör in Holstein, the Stura, a tributary of the Po, and the Stura (now the Store) in Italy, all probably named from the union of two Celtic words for water, Is and Dwr. Some regard it as merely the intensitive of Dwr, as in Welsh the prefix Ys is used to intensify. Note that a unique river name is a rarity.

Swale.—Bede, the Saxon historian, writes of the baptisms by S. Paulinus, in the Sualua. This is the Swale, which makes Sheppey an island. There are the East and the West Swale and Swalecliff, and the origin may be from the Anglo-Saxon Swellan, to swell. There are other Swales in Britain and Germany.

Thames.—This means the Broad, or Still, Water, from the Celtic adjective Tam and the root Is for water, which is reduplicated in the name Isis for the river at Oxford, higher than where the Thames falls into it. There is a river Tame in four of our counties.

Wantsum.—This much-dwindled stream separates Thanet from the mainland, and is called Wantsumu by Bede. The word is said to be not Celtic (as are most river names here and on the Continent); but Teutonic. Want or Went, meant a Way, and Som had the same qualifying force as in the word “winsome,” that is, equivalent to the “able” in “lovable.” There is a Wensum, a tributary of the Yare, near Norwich. While in early days the north branch of the Stour by Thanet was not fordable, this water was “go-able”—to coin a word. The “way” is not necessarily a water way. At Ightham, Seven Vents is the name of a place where seven roads meet.