Parts of South Yorkshire were hit by a month's worth of rain in just one day late last week, and 75,000,000 litres of water have been pumped out of the surrounding flooded areas so far (the equivalent of 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools). But this kind of extreme weather is becoming more common. The Committee for Climate Change identifies flooding as the greatest environmental threat currently faced by the UK. So where can we expect to be worst affected in future? It sounds strange, but to check how likely it is your town might flood, you could first look to its name.
The Flood and Flow project based at the University of Leicester has dived into the linguistic origins of place-names in the UK, and found those containing references to water often indicate they were prone to flooding during Medieval times. The project is particularly interested in the time period 700-1100AD – the period of recorded history where rapid warming and extreme weather most closely mirrored today’s climate. Incidentally, this was also when many of our permanent settlements were first established – meaning their names sometimes conceal information about flooding that can be strikingly relevant today.
The watery connotations of some town names are hidden in plain sight – take Oxford or Cambridge, for example. For others, you have to delve further into the past to uncover their waterlogged roots. Eton, for example, contains the Old English element ēa meaning ‘river’, with the whole name translating to ‘river estate’ in present day English.
“There’s a whole set of vocabulary that refers to the likelihood of flooding,” says Richard Jones, associate professor in landscape history at the University of Leicester, and lead on the project. ‘Wæsse’, for example, is an Old English term that can be translated to ‘land that floods and drains quickly’ and appears as a suffix in place-names such as Buildwas on the River Severn and Alrewas on the River Trent. Nottinghamshire-based Averham, meanwhile, comes from Old English ēagor, which translates to ‘[settlement] at the floods’. All of these towns are indeed located in areas prone to flooding today.
To create a granular picture of historic river activity across England, Jones and his team went beyond looking at the names of towns and villages, and examined the names of even smaller units of land: Medieval English manors. These were the smallest administrative element during these times: almost as big as parishes and each overseen by a Lord. The names of these areas are contained in archived manorial records, traced in faded Latin on thinning parchment paper. “They didn’t have access to maps during this period,” says Jones. “So they used names to map out their landscapes.”
These descriptive names clearly held another purpose for peasants that spent their lives working as farmers, and whose existence was tightly tuned to the forces of nature. “They wanted to know which parts of the ground would stay wet, or be problematic and prone to flood,” says Jones.
During this time, arable farming was becoming more widespread. But this activity actually contributed to an increasingly sodden landscape. Removing trees to make way for crops and ploughing fields both encourage the speedier run-off of rainwater, and the increased likelihood of rivers bursting their banks. In turn, rivers carrying more sediment are increasingly powerful.
Another prong of the Flood of Flow project involves the work of fluvial geothermologists, who capture and date layers of sediment in areas with watery names. “We’ve been able to reconstruct the history of flooding along some major rivers in England, and can now visualise the kind of floods that took place there in the past,” says Jones.
Altogether, in England alone, two hundred different water-related terms can be found lodged in several hundred place-names – many more if Wales and Scotland are included. Jones says that the richness of the vocabulary during these times betrays how intimately tied the lives of these communities were to nature’s rhythms. “Part of your life was to observe the river, to get to know it and its moods, and how it responds to rain,” he says. The sheer volume of water-related terms circulating during this time highlights the paltry nature of our water-related vocabulary today (stream, brook, river) by comparison.
So what names might imply a tendency towards flooding? Some include the linguistic fragment that translates to ‘island’, which originally referred to areas of dry land surrounded by wet marshland. This includes the Old Norse word holmr (in Haverholme, for example) and the Old English term ēg, which has mutated into ‘ey’ today. For example, Muchelney, situated atop the Somerset Levels, translates to ‘big island’. This Medieval meaning became pertinent once again when the area suffered extensive flooding in 2013.
But direct references to water aren’t the only means of identifying a river-adjacent locale. There are stems that hint more subtly at the existence of soggy medieval terrain. Gloucester-based Stroud, for example, stems from Old English strōd meaning ‘marshy land overgrown with brushwood’. Aldershot, meanwhile, signals the presence of water-loving alder trees, while Tadcaster may include the word tāde meaning ‘toad’.
In fact, there are a number of different classes of these linguistic clues: whether they refer to flowing water or bodies of water, water-loving flora and fauna, ‘wet’ geologies like mud (Shutlanger translates to ‘muddy wood on a slope’) or the apparatus associated with them: bridges, landing-places and fords.
But names can embody even more information than the mere presence of water. “River names have meaning and sometimes encapsulate the personality of the river,” says Jones. The River Trent, for example, translates to ‘trespasser’. “It’s a river that breaks its banks and comes to visit you in your bed,” says Jones. The River Swale too, expresses this tendency. Its Old English stem swalwe means ‘gush of water’, with ‘whirling’ and ‘swallowing’ connotations. Even more descriptively, the River Erewash translates to ‘angry river prone to flood and drain quickly’, leaving no doubt about its tempestuous nature. Some river names are less foreboding. The River Tove translates to ‘laggardly’ and ‘dilatory’. “It gives the impression the river is friendly,” says Jones.
In some cases, name changes have erased towns’ water-drenched histories. St Ives, for example, was first recorded as Slepe, from the Old English slǣp meaning ‘slippery place, portage’. The evolution of modern day English also means some place names counterintuitively sound watery when they’re not, and vice versa. For example, Waterthorpe in Sheffield might bring to mind well-hydrated land. “But it actually means, ‘owned by Walter’,” says Jones. Uphill, in North Somerset, has the opposite issue. We might envisage a hilltop town, but this name is actually an elision of the Old English words ‘uppan’ meaning ‘upon’ and ‘pyall’ meaning ‘tidal stream’ – hinting at the town’s coastal location.
While it may be tempting to use place names as a hard rule, Jones is keen to point out that a watery name isn’t entirely predictive of whether or not a town will flood. “Some watery place-names flood, others don’t,” he says. What could be more important to us are place-names that hint at areas that were once wooded – one of today’s most effective natural flood prevention methods. “Place-names may point us to areas where we could plant more trees to greater effect,” says Jones. For example, upstream of Fishlake, one of the towns currently worst affected by flooding, there are two place names that indicate the existence of ancient forest that have since been cleared: Braithwaite and Kirk Bramwith.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
