Excerpt from The Place-Names of Hertfordshire

As many persons are interested in the results of the study of place-names, it may be useful to say a few words upon the present way of pursuing this study.

Perhaps the most striking point about modern methods is their startling opposition to those formerly in vogue, and still believed in by many who have not had the Opportunity of moving with the times. It is now known and recognised that both the underlying ideas and the practice of the eighteenth century and more than the former half of the nineteenth century are by all means to be abandoned; and, consequently, that very little that is really valuable is to be obtained from county historians. The chief idea, at that time, was that English names are not really English, but Celtic; and this notion was backed by the amazing proposition that even if the names were English they would still be of Celtic origin, because all English was such, since our unfortunate language had nothing original about it. In fact, it is by no means unlikely that such ideas still prevail in many places. But, as was long ago pointed out by Professor Max Miiller, the discovery and study of Sanskrit have entirely changed our point of view. We can now recognise the no longer disputed fact that the various languages or dialects of the indo-germanic family stand to each other in a sisterly relation; and, consequently, that Old Celtic and Old English must be placed side by side. It is not denied that, owing to the accident of the invasion of Britain by Celtic tribes before the coming of the English, we may have borrowed from them some of their names for some rivers and mountains, but the number of these is no longer enormously exaggerated; and it is by no means uncommon, in the present day, to discover that many names that were once supposed to be Celtic are only to be explained from anglo-saxon. In the East of England, in particular, traces of the British occupation are, after all, but slight; and all the commoner names of towns and villages are perfectly intelligible to anyone who has a reasonable acquaintance with anglo-saxon, and will take the pains to hunt up their earliest forms.

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