80070062

open access

Version of Record

イギリス ノ ジュウダイ トシメイ - ユライ ト セイ エノ エイキョウ

Names of the Ten Biggest Cities in the United Kingdom - Their Origins and Influence upon British and American Surnames

Japanese (日本語)

神戸大学医療技術短期大学部紀要

3

165-178

神戸大学医療技術短期大学部

1987

2007-11-21

According to the 1986 Almanac published by Houghton Mifflin Company, the ten biggest cities in the United Kingdom are London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bradford, Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol. The names of these cities are linguistically classified into two groups for convenience' sake; names derived from Celtic and names from Old English. London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester belong to the former, while Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bradford and Bristol belong to the latter. This indicates that they have long and complicated histories behind their names. Surnames derived from these ten city-names are all found both in the United Kingdom and in the United States. However, in terms of their influence upon British and American surnames, they have given little influence upon them. Although Bradford and Sheffield rank 565th and 1665th respectively in the Smith's list of the 2000 commonest surnames in the U. S., they include many surnames derived from several name-sakes in other counties in England. Thus these two are considered exceptional and as such, require special attention. Surnames derived from the larger cities are not so common in proportion to the size of their populations as those from smaller places for two reasons: (a) movement of the population was always from country to town, and (b) men gravitated to the important cities rather than away from them. The small numbers of the surnames derived from the ten biggest cities except two seem to confirm this view.

紀要論文