'Pity Me', Begs Northern English Village
Mon May 5,10:22 AM ET

By Gideon Long

PITY ME, England (Reuters) - "Pity Me," pleads the signpost welcoming visitors to this northern English village.

And as trucks rumble past on the road to Newcastle while a brisk wind whips through the industrial estate, it is difficult not to.

Pity Me, in County Durham, is one of dozens of oddly named villages in northern England -- legacies of the region's rich mix of linguistic influences.

Just down the road is the village of No Place, while over the Pennine hills in Cumbria is Great Cockup.

Further north, in Northumberland, Blakehopeburnhaugh boasts the longest place name in England.

Residents of Cottonshopeburnfoot, a short walk up the valley, point out that their village's name is longer by a single letter, but officials have ruled it should be spelt as two words -- Cottonshopeburn Foot.

No one knows what, if anything, was once brewed in the Northumbrian town of Once Brewed, or indeed in the neighboring village of Twice Brewed.

Further south, Yorkshire boasts the villages of Crackpot, Fangfoss, Scagglethorpe, Blubberhouses, Slape Wath, Wetwang and Great Fryup -- a name which for most Britons conjures up images of sizzling bacon, sausages and fried eggs.

Pity Me is one of several English place names which testify to the influence of French, imported to Britain after the Norman invasion of 1066.

The village was thought to have been sited on a small lake, and took its name from Petit Mere, the French for Little Sea.

"A more fanciful suggestion is that Saint Cuthbert's coffin was dropped here by wandering monks on their way to Durham," local historian David Simpson writes on his Web Site www.thenortheast.fsnet.co.uk, which includes an exhaustive study of the origins of northern England's colorful place names.

"The miracle-working saint is said to have pleaded with the monks to be more careful and take pity on him."

Dalton-le-Dale, Chester-le-Street, Hetton-le-Hole and Haughton-le-Skerne provide further evidence of Norman French influence on northern England's names.

Crackpot takes its name from the Old English word for a crow, "kraka" and the Viking word "pot," Simpson says.

"A pot was usually a cavity or deep hole, often in the bed of a river, but in Crackpot's case refers to a rift in the limestone," he writes.

Great Fryup has nothing to do with cooked breakfasts but means simply the big valley belonging to Freya.

"Freya was an Old Norse personal name and also the name of the Norse goddess of fertility," Simpson says.

Blakehopeburnhaugh is of Anglo-Saxon origin and means "black valley stream with flat riverside land" while Wham, in County Durham, is thought to take its name from an Old Norse word Hvammr, meaning a short valley surrounded by high ground.

No one knows quite how No Place came by its name but its residents are fond of it.

In 1983, the local authority tried to rename the village Cooperative Villas -- a bright idea that provoked such a wave of scorn from the villagers that it was hastily dropped.