Leuan’s River

I learnt a new word today, and then several more chasing it. A veritable glossary. The first came from the Canadian Prime Minister. The rest turned up while I looked up what that word, a hydronym, meant. Every day’s a school day.

One find was potamonymy, the study of river names, and it has set today’s post running.

River names are stubborn things. Where settlements, villages and fields get renamed by whoever moves in next, rivers tend to keep their old names for centuries, even under new tongues. The River Leven, gentle enough here despite recent rain, carries an Old Celtic name untouched by Roman, Norseman or Norman.

Yorkshire owes an astonishing number of its river names to the Celts. Three old words for water, isca, dana and usso, gave rise to the Esk, the Don and the Ouse. Wales still uses afon for river, cousin to the Avon of the Cotswolds and to our Rye, echoing the Welsh Rhiw¹MORRIS, R. W. Yorkshire Through Place Names. Pp 28/9. David & Charles. 1982..

Many names simply describe the river. The Ure comes from isura, swift-flowing, shared with the Danube’s Isar. The Aire was Isara, the strong river. The Calder mixes hard or violent with stream. The Dove, threading through Farndale’s daffodils, takes its name from dark or black.

The Leven breaks the pattern. Its name honours Leuan, a Celtic water goddess, not a description at all.

Of forty-four Yorkshire river names, twenty-four trace back to the Celts, a striking survival rate given how many invaders later used those same rivers to push inland.

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  MORRIS, R. W. Yorkshire Through Place Names. Pp 28/9. David & Charles. 1982. ↩︎