names of towns

[gingerflaps]

some towns have 'ton' at the end, i know this means 'town' but what does 'ham' and the rest of them mean???

[Sequin]

ham is short for hamlet - a small village

[SteveD]

Go to this site and scroll down to "Where place names come from".

http://www.krysstal.com/wordname.html

[IndieSinger]

One of my favourites to explain is the suffix ~thorpe as in Overthorpe etc. This can be directly traced back to Germanic (as English is essentially a Germanic language).

There are many imaginary lines in Germany (in fact, in all countries). To linguists, they are called isoglosses and they separate (roughly) different spellings, words, pronunciations etc. Language dividing lines, if you will.

One such isogloss is called the "Appel/Apfel Line" in North Germany. South of that line, you will hear the pf-sound in words such as Apfel. North of this line, you will hear Appel. And to this day, Apfel is the present-day German word for "Apple", and Appel is said in the far North of Germany and is the present standard word for "Apple" in The Netherlands. And, of course, Appel hasn't changed much in English.

Now, the word in German for "village" was (and still is) Dorf. Following the same rules as above, this became dorp in Dutch (and again, still is). Via a process called a Sound Shift, the Germanic /d/ sound became a th-sound. So dorp became thorp(e). And the suffix was born!

[Sammy Snake]

'Ton' means 'settletment'. 

I live near a place called Werrington and the name is derived from a tribesman called Weringa who started a settlement (ton) known as Weringa's Ton and over he years/centuries it evolved into Werrington.

[RevShirls]

This is a fairly good website with the origins of English place names.

http://www.luoac.co.uk/other/english.php

[rod]

Ham, a common name, from old English Hamm which has various meanings, including enclosure, land hemmed in by water or higher ground, land in a river-bend  also Stoke old English meaning farmstead, hamlet ,secondary settlement.     

[Grunty]

Sequin and Rod seem to be giving different answers, but they are answering different questions, both correctly.  Ham means village.  Hamm, often corrupted to ham to confuse us, is a topographical term described by Rod.  Ham on its own, there is one in Surrey, is always derived from hamm.  There is detailed information in Margaret Gelling's book Signposts to the Past.  If anyone ever sees the signpost that Margaret has used on her dust jacket, I'll put the kettle on for you.