Excerpt from Worcestershire Place Names Nearly all English place-names have their root in anglo-saxon the principal exceptions are rivers and hills, which frequently maintain their earlier names (especially large rivers), and then their construction is almost hopeless. On the west side of Severn a few names appear to be of Welsh origin (e. G. Malvern, Mathon, Pendock, Pensax, and should therefore be dealt with by a Welsh scholar. Before commencing my work I was of opinion that the Norsemen had left no permanent traces of their invasions in Worcestershire but I now think it pretty clear they made a settlement in the neighbourhood of Clent and Hagley, probably on one of their raids up Severn. The same thing happened in North Staffordshire, where several place-names and words are clearly of Danish origin. The anglo-saxons appear to have been a homely race, for their place-names have the simplest origins, very different to the Welsh, Irish, and Scotch, whose names largely savour of poetry, sentiment, and history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.