{"id":9840,"date":"2014-04-07T15:40:12","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T15:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=9840"},"modified":"2014-04-07T15:40:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-07T15:40:12","slug":"towns-gardens-and-fences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=9840","title":{"rendered":"Towns, gardens and fences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I went to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Denbigh\">Denbigh<\/a>, a small town in the north east of Wales, to sing in a concert. On the way there there was some discussion about the origins and meaning of the name Denbigh. So I thought I&#8217;d find out more. The English name of the town doesn&#8217;t mean anything, but the Welsh name, Dinbych, means &#8216;small fortress&#8217; &#8211; <em>din<\/em> is an old word for fort or castle related to the word <em>dinas<\/em> (fort; refuge; city), and <em>bych<\/em> is a variant form of <em>bach<\/em> (small). Related words include <em>dinasfraint<\/em> (citzenship), <em>dinasol<\/em> (civic, municipal), and <em>dinaswr<\/em> (citizen).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Din<\/strong> comes from the same root as the Irish <em>d\u00fan<\/em> (fort), the Scottish Gaelic <em>d\u00f9n<\/em> (fortress, heap), the Manx <em>doon<\/em> (fort, fastness, stronghold, bastion, earth fort, dun, fortified rock), and <em>din<\/em> (fortress) in Breton and Cornish &#8211; the Proto-Celtic <em>*d\u016bnom<\/em> (stronghold) [<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/d%C3%BAn\">source<\/a>], which is cognate with the Proto-Germanic <em>*tunaz\/*tunan<\/em> (fortified place), the root of the Old English <em>tuun\/t\u016bn<\/em> (an enclosure; farmstead; village; estate), from which we get the word town; and of the Dutch <em>tuin<\/em> (garden), and the German <em>Zaun<\/em> (fence, hedge). <\/p>\n<p>The element <em>-dunum<\/em> in Gaulish\/Latin places names, such as Lugdunum (Lyon) and Acitodunum (Ahun), comes from the same root, as does the element <strong>-ton<\/strong> in English places names such as Workington, Ulverston, Dalton and Warton.<\/p>\n<p>The root of all these words is the PIE <em>*dhu-no-<\/em> (enclosed, fortified place, hill-fort), from <em>*dheue-<\/em> (to close, finish, come full circle) [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?term=town\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jlb2011.co.uk\/wales\/glossary\/\">Glossary of Welsh Place-Name Elements<\/a>, and a <a href=\"http:\/\/kepn.nottingham.ac.uk\/\">Key to English places names<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week I went to Denbigh, a small town in the north east of Wales, to sing in a concert. On the way there there was some discussion about the origins and meaning of the name Denbigh. So I thought I&#8217;d find out more. The English name of the town doesn&#8217;t mean anything, but the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,104,107,116,127,10,23,45,56,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dutch","category-english","category-etymology","category-german","category-irish","category-language","category-manx","category-proto-indo-european","category-scottish-gaelic","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}