Description
Irby upon Humber
Irby upon Humber, Lincolnshire
Irby upon Humber, in the Bradley Wapentake of Lincolnshire, comes from Old Norse Íra,the genitive plural form of Íri ‘an Irishman; probably also a Norseman who had lived in Ireland’ and Old Norse by ‘a farmstead, a village’.
The reference is probably to an isolated settlement of Norwegian vikings from Ireland, or perhaps Irishmen who came with the vikings to England. However, the exact implications of such a name are not yet fully understood and are the subject of ongoing work by Dr Jayne Carroll of the Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham.
Irby upon Humber is to distinguish the place from Irby in the Marsh, also in Lincolnshire.
Ascribed Culture
Collection
- Viking Names
Keywords
- ethnonym, Irish, Lincolnshire, Norwegians, place-name
Further information
This object is related to
Irby upon Humber, Lincolnshire.
Find out about Irby upon Humber, Lincolnshire.
Acknowledgements
Image © JThomas, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0
References
Jayne Carroll, forthcoming.
Kenneth Cameron, A Dictionary of Lincolnshire Place-Names. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society (1998), p. 70.
Kenneth Cameron with John Field and John Insley, The Place-Names of Lincolnshire V, English Place-Name Society Volume LXXIII (1997), pp. 124-125.