The Power of Naming- Place Names in England

by stef90 (student)

University Degree Linguistics, Classics and related subjects

The Power of Naming: Place Names in England

Historically speaking toponymy – the study of place-names – has focused on etymology as opposed to power discourse (Cameron 1996; Culpeper 2005; Diaz Vera 1996; Gelling 1995; Gelling 2007; Hough 1997; Kadmon 2004; Paisey & Paisey 2011; Scott 2003). However, in recent years, scholars have turned instead to the consideration of the power relationships implicit in the act of naming a geographic location (Radding & Western 2010; Rose-Redwood, Alderman, & Azaryahu 2010;). Particularly in the case of England, the power of naming becomes a key insight into the history of conquest from foreign powers that the island has experienced in its long life. These conquerors understood the act of naming as the linguistic equivalent of driving a flag into the soil of the vanquished foe’s garden – a means of solidifying and extending the message of their invasion and subsequent occupation throughout time. Such is the power expressed through names and naming processes. As Rose-Redwood, Alderman and Azaryahu (2010, p. 454) note, “the naming of places is one of the primary means of attempting to construct clearly demarcated spatial identities”. For the purpose of the following essay, these spatial identities are to be thought of as political identities as well. “As a place-name becomes opaque and the original meaning is lost over time, the name comes to feel like a word, in that it feels like an arbitrary combination of sounds used to refer to a certain item or idea” (Radding & Western 2010, p. 396). The same is true of a conquering force, as this essay will demonstrate.

This essay argues that the study of place-names requires “a critical analysis of the social and political struggles over spatial inscription and related toponymic practices” (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010, p. 455). As such, the study of place-names becomes more informative about the past – about the role that naming played in the military, social and cultural history of England. However, what this essay will also demonstrate is that the social and political act of spatial inscription and place-naming still occurs in the present day, and still functions as a highly effective method for a conquering power to secure its presence over the emotional and psychological space of

the invaded populace. This essay will compare the Norman Invasion of England of 1066 with the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 to illustrate how the toponymic practices continue to serve key political functions. Despite the thousand year gap between these two military campaigns, the core activity remains the same – rename the conquered space using conqueror language in order to cement physical power with linguistic power. This essay will also show how place-naming served a crucial political function even after the use of maps as a means of demarking political territory became widespread.

Linguistic and toponymic practices have been used by invaders not only to stake a claim in the conquered lands and to demonstrate their ownership literally, the power of naming extends that power across the centuries, simply because the town or village will adopt the name, people will continue to use the name over and over, and as time passes, the name becomes part of the cultural vernacular and assimilates into the new order. As Radding & Western (2010, p. 395) explain, “names are given intentionally, to impart a certain meaning. They can be the converse of arbitrary. Yet, over time, people can fail to remember the original, specifically intended meaning and attribute other ones”. In addition, the act of saying the name repeatedly, over many centuries, continues to assert the dominance of the original source of the name. Thus the individual or group that claims the place via the name also lays claim to the

psychological, social and cultural space of the invaded peoples, by leveraging the insidious and viral nature of language itself.

This is a preview of the whole essay

psychological, social and cultural space of the invaded peoples, by leveraging the insidious and viral nature of language itself.

As Rose-Redwood et al. (2010 p. 454) note, “a critical analysis of the politics of spatial inscription remains one of the most effective strategies for challenging essentialist claims to affixing stable identities to particular spaces”. Opacity in linguistics refers to the idea that the substitution of a term by another term with the same reference often alters the truth of the whole word. As Radding & Western (2010, p. 397), explain, the linguistic definition of opacity is “a failure to analyze a form according to its historical, morphosemantic composition”. How this relates to place-names in England is evidenced by the fact that the names are still in common usage, with little to no awareness of their Scandinavian origin. In other words, the “truth” of the Norman Conquest has become subsumed by the repetition of the place-names across the centuries.

As Radding & Western 2010 (p. 397) note, “names are bestowed in order to have a specific meaning that we wish to associate with the referent. The form is willed, not arbitrary; the name is transparent through societal associations”. The Norman Invasion of 1066 offers an example of this linguistic will in action. When Edward the Confessor passed away in 1066, he died with the succession to the throne of England in disarray (Hudson 2011, para. 1). This created a power vacuum, which was quickly filled by Harold Godwinson, one of Edward the Confessor’s top advisors (Hudson 2011, para. 1). As soon as the throne was seized however and Godwinson took his crown in haste, two tremendous threats to his reign surfaced: “one from the king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, who was supported by Harold Godwinson's brother Tostig, and the other from William, Duke of Normandy” (Hudson 2011, para. 1).

Despite the fact that Harold Godwinson was victorious against the Norwegian threat during the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, his army was decimated and he himself was killed during the infamous Battle of Hastings in October of 1066 (Hudson 2011, para. 1). So began the conquest of England, one place name at a time.

William the Conqueror as he became known applied a measured and strategic response to the conquest of his new lands (Hudson 2011, para. 2). William the Conqueror “brought a new aristocracy to England from Normandy and some other areas of France” (Hudson 2011, para. 2). In addition, the invader “strengthened aristocratic lordship and moved towards reform of the church” (Hudson 2011, para. 2). Most importantly, William the Conqueror remained mindful of the political backing that had negotiated and facilitated his rise to power and subsequent acquisition of the island of England.

A clear example of this in England occurs in a number of towns, including Tattershall Thorpe in Lincolnshire, Easthorpe, in North Yorkshire, Westhorpe in Suffolk, and Littlethorpe in Leicestershire. Thorpe is a Scandinavian term that translates as “secondary settlement” which typically comes after the name of the parent village, as in the case of Tattershall Thorpe (Field & Gelling 2008, p., 25). As Field & Gelling (2008, p. 25) note, the word “thorp is very frequently combined with Old Norse personal names [and] Thorpe names continued to be formed after the Norman Conquest, for example

Countesthorpe, which includes a title of nobility”. Thus, William the Conqueror was “careful to preserve the powerful administrative machinery that had distinguished the regime of the late Anglo-Saxon kings (Hudson 2011, para. 2). In order to solidify the power of this Anglo-Saxon legacy, the conquerors used language – specifically, the

naming of places – to spread their influence throughout the newly acquired lands. He also used the language to refer back to the power lineage of his home country. Here we see a clear example of the linguistic function applied to extend imperial power from its seat to its newly acquired state.

Now, consider the example of the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003. The following excerpt from the Sydney Herald is included here to illustrate the point:

You won’t find Canal Road, California or Coors Street on the commercial street maps of Baghdad, but this is the new Iraq, where US soldiers are redrawing the city one English name at a time … Oklahoma and Pennsylvania replaced street names in the industrial section of the old city framed by historic Al-Rashid and Khulafa streets. In the world of the occupier, name familiarity breeds security, said Major Dean Thurmond of the US Army’s Combined Joint Task Force Seven … Main, Cigar, and South streets were scribbled [on maps] over the names more familiar to Baghdadis … ‘These boys are far from home and they tend to use names that remind them of home,’ said one special forces sergeant in the town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, dismissing suggestions that the practice carried an air of imperialism. ‘There’s nothing magical or sinister about it.’ (Lost in Baghdad? Take Main Street to Virginia Avenue, para. 4).

The eerie similarities between the actions of the invading forces of William the Conqueror and those of the United States cannot be ignored. Both armies arrived and

immediately set about renaming key strategic points of interests necessary to solidify their presence and slowly but steadily erode the presence of the old regime – the conquered force. As Rose-Redwood et al. (2010, p. 455) note, “a mere two weeks after the initial invasion of Iraq, US troops commandeered Saddam International Airport, and the US Central Command swiftly renamed the complex Baghdad International Airport”. The United States followed in the footsteps of the Normans to quickly establish themselves linguistically, even before the infrastructure of the regime change rule had even begun to be built. As Rose-Redwood et al. (2010, p. 455) explain:

The renaming of Baghdad’s airport marked the opening salvo of the US occupation, which continues to reshape Iraq’s toponymic landscape today. New US military camps and bases were given names that resonated with righteousness, such as ‘Camp Freedom’, ‘Camp Liberty’, and ‘Camp Justice’, and other toponyms were taken straight out of the American geographical lexicon, including ‘Camp Arkansas’ and ‘Forward Operating Base Manhattan’ (Rose-Redwood et al. 2010, p. 455)

Place-names at the time of William the Conqueror also served a crucial function to label the space as Norman territory before the advent and widespread usage of maps took place (Branch 2011). Language was an effective means to ensure that the place-name took on the name of the invading force, even if there were no maps available to demarcate the land officially (Branch 2011). Language therefore became the unofficial means of staking territorial claim.

While it is hard to conceive of a world that does not have “modern nation-states as we know them – their power, relationships, and, perhaps most of all, borders”, such a

world existed at the time of William the Conqueror (Branch 2011, para. 6).

According to Jordan Branch, during the latter part of the medieval period, a number of different authorities “ranging from small-time aristocrats to the Holy Roman emperor claimed power over collections of discrete places, not contiguous territories” (Branch 2011, para. 6). Thus, sovereignty per se was localized in “cities, towns, and villages and radiated outward, with peripheries often ambiguously defined and little heeded” (Branch 2011, para. 6).

Medieval maps were true to this fact, as they emphasized "the importance of places such as cities over the spaces in between them" (Branch 2011, para. 6). During this time, the political powers that be and the travelers “used texts for many of the purposes maps serve today, such as providing travel directions and demarcating sovereignty in treaties” (Branch 2011, para. 6). Thus the “conceptual shift toward the modern state began in the 15th century, when Ptolemy's Geography, which showed how to create maps based on a coordinate grid of latitude and longitude” (Branch 2011, para. 6). However, the technology was slow to be adopted by the masses. Instead, language was used in lieu of maps to demarcate territory. As Branch (2011, para. 6) explains:

This new technology required by its very nature that maps geometrically correlate with the on-the-ground geography. The gaps between power centers could no longer be magically shrunk to insignificance. By happenstance, this shift came just as the printing press was dramatically increasing the quantity of maps in circulation, from a few thousand in the late 15th century to "millions" in the 16th century.

The new maps were however far from “ideal for depicting the old mishmash of authorities that text had ably conveyed. Instead, mapmakers simplified sovereignty's bounds by drawing clear lines of demarcation between powers” (Branch 2011, para. 6). The technology did not come into full use until the mid-17th century, when “nearly all atlas maps showed boundary lines” (Branch 2011, para. 6). However, as Branch (2011, para. 6) notes, “these lines did not reflect actual political practices..for nearly a century, treaties and other sources of political authority would continue to demarcate sovereignty using text”. Thus, language and place-naming continued to function as the sole means of demarcating territorial power.

In conclusion, without question the act of assigning a name to a place becomes a purely utilitarian enterprise from a linguistic standpoint, simply because a place needs to be called something. The assignment of an arbitrary signifier has long served the practical function of allowing human beings to refer to the same thing amongst themselves using an agreed upon sound that corresponds with a physical object. The application of language, at the basic level, is simply a means of organizing space and linking it to experience through our senses.

However, language – specifically the act of using language to name a place – also serves a political, social and cultural activity. In the case of towns, cities and regions that have seen extensive military invasion, linguistic application of force becomes a political tool which invading forces employ strategically. The invading forces use the power of naming for a number of different purposes. Assigning a name to a conquered location demarcates the physical space in the language of the conqueror, not the language of the invaded peoples. In essence then, the location changes ownership not only physically but linguistically, as the applied term refers not to the language and culture of the conqueror, and all subsequent references to the renamed place by definition now affirm the power of the conqueror.

Reference List

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Lost in Baghdad? Take Main Street to Virginia Avenue, viewed 8 May 2012, >

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