Topical Topics
What's in a Name?
Surnames
Just how much people's lives revolved around woods, forests and their products in the past is revealed by the wealth of surnames reflecting the past or present links to woods in this country. People's surnames often indicate what they did or where they lived back in Mediaeval times.
Just casting your eye down the school register or the phone book reveals how closely people's lives were tied up with trees in the past.
How many people do you know who have surnames like Wood, Woodman, Woodward, Woodiman or Woodger, or Forest or Forester or one of its variations in spelling, or have names associated with places such as Blackwood or Underwood or Ashmore or Ashwell? Other people have surnames like the trees themselves - such as Oak or Beech or Ashe or Rowntree.
That is not to mention the whole list of other craftsmen who then worked the timber - the Wheelwrights, the Barrels, the Coopers, the Sawyers and the Carpenters.
No doubt you can think of a lot more but I hope we have convinced you just how tied up your ancestor's lives were with trees and forests in the not too distant past.
More: Try the "Penguin Dictionary of Surnames".
Place names
The beginning or end of place names often indicates a tree origin - the woodsomething or something wood. Some are very obvious like those which actually have wood or forest in their name, or some other local equivalent, such as copse or covert or gill.
These topographical names form a large and diverse group in which types of tree or areas of trees figure prominently.
Many tree place names are derivatives of old English names. For example, many beginning with Ac come from the old English Ac meaning oak tree or acorns. So we have Accrington in Lancashire meaning a farmstead or village where acorns were found or stored; Acle in Norfolk signifies an oakwood or a clearing in it; Acombe in York is a place with oak trees and Acton is a farmstead or village next to oak trees or specialising in working oak timber.
On the High Weald in Kent and Sussex, the ending "denn" or "den" comes from the old English for a woodland pasture, especially for swine. The ending "holt", or its corruption to "hot", originates from the old English for a wood or thicket and "hyrst" was a wooded hill and is normally written "hurst" nowadays.
"Thwaite" derives from the Norse for a clearing in the forest - and the ending "ley" or "leigh" meant the same in Anglo-Saxon.
The names of woods themselves often reveal their past. If a wood is named after a parish and adjoins a parish boundary, it is likely to be very old indeed. Woods with names such as Spring, Cuts, Coppice or Copse are often ancient woodlands whereas Plantation, Covert, Belt, Furze and Scrubs are more likely to be 19th century in origin.
Quite how the RFS Pancake Wood on the Chilterns got its name is anyone's guess.
More: Try the "Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names" by A.D. Mills.