I don’t have the facts available to me here but would like to keep this interesting city names thread going, and have a question to ask, so will work from memory. Please forgive any inaccuracies you may discover!
As many of you will be aware a large number of English place names are Saxon in origin, in fact the name Sussex, the county I live in, means South Saxons and is rich in Saxon place names. An example of this is a small town called Billingshurst. There was a Saxon leader named Billa who brought his people (people = ing in Saxon) to England where they settled on a wooded hillside (hurst in Saxon), hence Billingshurst. Near their settlement was a Roman Road and over a period of time numbers of them wandered up this road, which led to London, and formed another settlement at the gate into the city. This became known as Billingsgate and was the site of the famous London fish market that was moved to a new location a few years ago.
When people moved out from Europe to new lands they tended to name the communities they formed after the ones they had left behind. I wonder how far the old Saxon names have spread around the world and my question is does anyone know of a “Billing…” based name in the USA, Australia, NZ, SA etc?
dxb.
