Eatingham (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Pulp History]

I know we have covered this elsewhere (but can't find where!!), but how is the development of place names consisting of the 'ingham' suffix explained in northern France.... for example in 'Nord pas de Calais' in north France we have Radinghem, Seninghem, Tatinghem, Ruminghem, even Blaringhem. They seem to only appear in this part of France nearest to Britain, unless anybody knows of others..... what is their origin? Anybody know??
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Question everything!

[AJMorton]

I always thought 'ham' 'hem' and 'Heim' were derived from 'hame' or Home'.

Cunninghame is said to be 'King's Hame' (Scots).

Then again it is also said to mean "Land of Rabbits" so who knows?

[AJMorton]

Cunninghame (Cunning-Hame = King's Home) works if we use the Deutsch for King (no one has ever worked out what Cunninghame means).

I will go for Ham = Home.

[Mick Harper]

So heimat is 'at home'.

[AJMorton]

Yeah! And Cunninghame is Konigheim.

It's important (I guess) to differentiate between the first and second words. Heim (if indeed it means 'home) is universal whereas the first word will be different every time depending on who's, or what's home it actually is.

In this case, Cunning or Konig can't possibly be the same person or thing as Eating and each will have to be deciphered separately.

[Hatty]

[AJMorton]

I don't, for the moment, see why not.

[Hatty]

There's a village called Etchingham (Echyngham?) in Sussex near Kent and I wondered if there was a cynge connection but it seems to be a Norman derivation, going back to Pulpy's point about northern France. Wiki says

[Mick Harper]

So the place-name industry believes that it means the gaff of the followers of someone called Ecci and that it is a pure coincidence that an actual Etchingham pitched up a few centuries later. That's pretty weird even by their standards.

Of course there is the possibility that this Norman dude changed his name to that of the village but this is pretty unlikely given that a) he was a landowner in general and b) would hardly name himself after a place and then promptly give it away to some passing churl.

[Mick Harper]

There's a neat test case available here. Presumably the Ecci place-namers didn't know about milord de Achyngham so they are shown up to be a bunch of boobies that say the first thing that comes into their head. But now we cross the Channel and see what the Frog place-namers say Achyngham means. They certainly won't have heard of this inga- stuff. At the very least we'll have two sets of place-namers at each others' throats. Except there prolly aren't any French place-namers. They're not into antiquey stuff. Too much sex and shooting small birds, if you want my opinion.

[Hatty]

'De Achyngham' doesn't have a French ring to it; could be that the "well-known" landowning family took its name from the manor or land.

The manor of Etchingham was apparently located at the precise spot where the London-Hastings train station now stands, a strategic location presumably. The actual living quarters of the landowning Achynghams was across the Kent border in a village called Udimore near Rye so why weren't they the 'De Udimores'?.

[Mick Harper]

Au contraire, as Pulpissima has pointed out, this is a very characteristic 'French' name -- there are spillions of suchlike in the north-eastern regions of France. Now THOBR explains this situation: the original cleave-line between French-speakers and Dutch-speakers ran from roughly the Pas de Calais in a south-easterly direction, meaning that villages to the west of that line were French and to the east Dutch.

In subsequent centuries of (mostly) French political dominance the language cline has gradually shifted eastwards but since language clines move a lot quicker than villages, this has left a great many 'Dutch' villages on the wrong side ie inhabited by French-speakers. This would mean that the 'ingas' is a Dutch form and that the survival of the same in England is a consequence of the Belgic occupation of east and south Britain in the years before Rome.

However, there are two other possibilities:
1. 'ingas' is in fact an English form and the Pas de Calais 'ingas' are a consequence of English military expansion across the Channel in pre-historic times
2. 'ingas' is in fact an ancient 'Dutch/English' form and therefore survives wherever people speaking these languages once lived.

Oh yeah, I suppose we ought to concede that it might even be an Anglo-Saxon term just as the experts say! The A/S certainly occupied England and, since the Pas de Calais on some reckoning was also called the Saxon Shore, the A/S might have been in the Pas de Calais region as well.

[Hatty]

[AJMorton]

[Mick Harper]

That is scarcely the issue, AJ. The fact is that Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are so alike that nothing historical can be drawn from whatever trifling differences they now possess. In other words Gaelic place-names in south-western Scotland might as likely be via Scots Gaelic incursion as from Irish Gaelic incursion.