Ancient names for lakes and rivers in Cumbria
23 January, 2025
By D.G. George, dgg.abercuch@gmail.com
Glen George is an Honorary Research Fellow with the FBA and holds Visiting Professorships at Aberystwyth University and University College London. Here, he explores the ancient roots of some lake and river names in Cumbria.
Edited by Rachel Stubbington, Nottingham Trent University
Rachel is both a Fellow of the Freshwater Biological Associat,ion and long-standing Editor of FBA articles. If you would like to submit an article for consideration for publication, please contact Rachel at: rachel.stubbington@ntu.ac.uk
Introduction
Some of the oldest cartographic names in Britain are those associated with lakes and rivers. One area that has retained many ancient names is the modern county of Cumbria. The Anglo-Saxons only reached the area at the end of the 7th century and were displaced by the Strathclyde Welsh in the 10th. Tracing the roots of these names can thus be difficult, because they include elements from several languages. When the Romans arrived in Britain the main language spoken was Brittonic, whilst the Picts in the far north spoke a related language. By the end of the Roman period, Brittonic had morphed to produce an early form of Welsh which then evolved to produce Cumbric in the north, Cymraeg in Wales and Kernewec in the south west. During the 10th century, Norse migrants from Ireland settled in Cumbria and introduced elements from two other languages.
In 1953, the linguist Kenneth Jackson published the book ‘Language and History in Early Britain’, which included a map of the distribution of early river names. On this basis, England could be divided into three zones that matched the dates of the Anglo-Saxon advance (Fig. 1):
Zone A: Areas conquered during the first half of the 5th century where the only names to survive were those for large rivers.
Zone B. Areas conquered during the 7th century where some small rivers retained their ancient names.
Zone C: The last areas conquered where many small rivers had kept their original names.
Figure 1. Distribution of ancient river names in England (after Jackson 1953). Solid lines indicate rivers that have retained their ancient names.
One area that retains many ancient river names is the modern county of Cumbria. This was the heart of the kingdom of Rheged in the 6th century and formed part of the kingdom of Ystrad Clud in the 10th century. In Wales, we still refer to the area as ‘Yr Hen Ogledd’ (The Old North) before it became ‘An Deas Ur’ (The New South) when the Scots gained control in the 11th century.
In 2017, I published a book ‘Golwg Newydd ar yr Hen Ogledd’ (A New Look at the Old North) that summarised the early history of the region. Much of what we know about the period is contained in poems composed by bards like Taliesin in Rheged and Aneirin in Din Eidyn (Edinburgh). These poems were first transmitted orally before being written down at the end of the 7th century. In the back of the book, I listed 200 surviving ‘Welsh-like’ place names: some with Brittonic roots and others coined in later centuries Here, I present a selection of these early lake and river names and explain their likely meaning.
The lake names
Three of Cumbria’s large lakes have names of Brittonic or ‘Welsh’ origin and two others have names that appear to have been misinterpreted. The lake with the earliest attested name is Derwentwater since *derwa was the Brittonic word for oak. When the Romans built their fort at Papcastle they called it Derventio, a Latinized form of a Brittonic name. The next reference to Derwentwater appears in a Welsh poem that was copied on to an empty page of Aneirin’s epic poem Y Gododdin. The oldest surviving version is from the 13th century, but experts believe that this fragment was added to an early copy by a scribe from Strathclyde. The poem, Pais Dinogad (Dinogad’s Smock), is a cradle song that describes a very primitive way of life. Some believe that it was composed by the child’s mother as she waited for his father to return from a hunt:
‘When your father went to the fell
he would bring back a roebuck, a wild pig and a stag as well.
A speckled grouse from the mountain side
and fish from the waterfall of Derwennydd’
That waterfall was probably located on the stream that enters the lake near the Lodore Falls Hotel. The name of this waterfall has proved puzzling, but may be based on gelod, the Welsh word for leech.
Another lake with an ancient name is Crummock, an adaptation of *Crumbāco, the Brittonic for ‘bent’. This is a poor description of present-day Crummock, but a satellite image (Fig. 2) shows that Crummock and Buttermere were part of the same basin until the valley was divided either by the accumulation of silt or a landslip.
Figure 2. The low-lying land that now separates Buttermere from Crummock. Google Earth, ©2024 Google.
The name of Devoke Water in the south west tells a different story. This is the only large lake in Cumbria with dark water, a characteristic that explains why its original name was something like the Welsh ‘Du Fach’ (little black one). This name can be no older than the late Bronze Age, when the wet weather forced many upland farmers onto lower ground. The remains of their homesteads can still be seen on the hill above Devoke together with stones cleared from the land.
Two lakes whose names have, almost certainly, been misinterpreted are Bassenthwaite and Esthwaite Water. Bassenthwaite (Fig. 3) is assumed to have been named after the village which includes the element tveit, the Norse for a clearing. When this settlement was built, the lake must already have had a name and could well have included a variant of *bassus, the Brittonic word for ‘shallow’. ‘Esthwaite’ also looks like a Norse name but, in the 16th century, the spelling was ‘Estwyth’. This looks like a variant of the Welsh ystwyth (agile), the name used to describe the meandering river that meets the sea at Aberystwyth. I suspect that ‘Estwyth’ was first used to describe the course of the river and then transferred to the lake.
Figure 3. Bassenthwaite in the Lake District, Cumbria. Credit: Simon Johnson.
The river names
There are many ancient river names in Cumbria, but a few will suffice to highlight some common forms. From a historical point of view, the most important name is the Lyvennet, a tributary of the River Eden. This is the Llwyfenyd mentioned in Taliesin’s poems where we learn that Urien, the ruler of Rheged, had a court on its banks. Another river with an evocative name is the Dacre, a form derived the Brittonic *dagr (tear). We do not know why it was given that name, but it may be connected with some catastrophic event at the nearby fort of Dunmallard. This name appears to be a distorted form of the Welsh Din Malltod which, loosely translated means ‘The fort of tragedy’.
Because most Celtic place names are descriptive, they often contain useful information on the natural environment. Several Cumbrian rivers include the element ‘cald’, a contraction of the Welsh caled ddwr (hard water) a reference not to the water chemistry but to the force of the flow. Another common element is the prefix ‘pow’, derived from Welsh pwll (pool). This is sometimes applied to springs, as in ‘Powdunet’ (Pwll Dunawd), a healing spring near Moorland.
One splendidly descriptive name is the Leven, as that river wends its way slowly towards the sea. The root is the old Welsh word for smooth llyvyn, which then morphed into the modern llyfn. Sometimes, the explanations offered for a name do not match the characteristics of the subject. This appears to be the case for the Lowther, a name assumed to be based on lauther, the Norse word for ‘foaming’. A more plausible explanation is that it is a truncated form of the Welsh llawch ddwr, an old expression meaning ‘generous water’– a much better description of a slow-moving river that irrigates some of the best agricultural land in the area.
This tendency to overlook the Welsh origins of Cumbrian place names is a common feature of many recent publications. One author suggested that the name ‘Nannycatch’ (Fig. 4) implied that goats had once been kept in the valley! To a Welsh speaker, the meaning is clear; the name is a slightly modified version of Nant-y-Calch (limestone stream). This stream rises in the uplands before turning west towards Egremont, an area in which limestone had been quarried for centuries.
Figure 4. General view of ‘Nannycatch’ (Nant-y-Calch). Credit D.G. George.
These examples show that a great deal can be learnt by searching for the roots of old names. In Wales, legislation to protect such names has now been enacted (Eryri National Park Authority 2025), an initiative that could usefully be applied to some areas in England.
References
Eryri National Park Authority (2025). Safeguarding historic landscape names. Available at: https://snowdonia.gov.wales/discover/culture-language-and-community/place-names/safeguarding-historic-landscape-names/
George, D.G. (2017). Golwg Newydd ar yr Hen Ogledd. Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 365 pp.
Jackson, K. (1953). Language and History in Early Britain, Edinburgh University Press, 752 pp.
Footnote
* This convention means that the word has been reconstructed and does not appear in any written text. The source could thus be place names or inscriptions in stone or even comparisons with Gaulish roots.
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