Dear Paul, Dear All,
A derivation from Welsh *llostog, 'beaver', or its British equivalent,
was proposed for one of the Lancashire rivers called Lostock in J of the
EPNS 21 p45. But there seem to be problems with this. The modern Welsh
word for 'beaver' is llostlyddan, 'broad-tail', and *llostog, 'tailed'
doesn't make sense in the same way. Pn evidence suggests that
llostlyddan is a comparatively modern word, replacing earlier afanc,
although as afancs also appear in the literature as shapeshifting water
monsters they're a bit hard to pin down. Moreover, Richard Coates has
proposed a British precedent for Welsh befyr, Cornish befer, as the
qualifier for Beverley (cf. Gaulish beber in Bibracte etc). There seems
to be something of a surplus of pre-OE beaver-names.
There is a good chapter on OE beofer pns in Bryony Coles' Beavers in
Britain's Past (Oxbow, 2006) pp139-59. The north-west would be a good
location but it it seems odd to have river-names that just mean 'beaver'
rather than 'beaver stream' etc.
None of this excludes the possibility of a Celtic river-name meaning
'with a tail', 'windy' although it is hard to see why this attribute
should be confined to rivers in Lancashire and Cheshire.
Jeremy Harte
-----Original Message-----
From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Paul Skellington
Sent: 02 June 2008 07:27
Subject: Re: Allostock
U sure about this? This formulation doesn't seem to be particularly
common outside several 'Lostock' PNs in Cheshire and S. Lancashire. All
appear to lie on or nearby streams that wind side-to-side through the
flattish land in these regions in a rather meandering way. Perhaps,
given their distribution in areas that don't appear to have any
Anglo-Saxon settlement archaeology, and in the case of S. Lancs at least
have a good deal of evidence for significant British PNs survival, might
they be derived from some manner of Brittonic / Old Welsh _lostog_?
Welsh Llost = 'tail', so with -og [> -ock via English speakers] it could
be 'tail-like', 'windy / meandering'....? Or perhaps named due to
beavers, which would surely have have made use of these habitats if they
hadn't already been exterminated in these areas by the post-Roman
era....
Paul
--- On Sat, 31/5/08, Scott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ALLOSTOCK "Lostock with the hall" Allostok 13th, 1312, etc.
Allostock(e) from 1534. OE *hall*, genitive *halle* + p.n. Lostock as in
LOSTOCK GRALAM. Watts, CDEP-N, p. 9.
>
> Scott Catledge
>
> P.S. LOSTOCK is 'pig-sty hamlet' OE *hlose* + > *stoc* Watts, op.
cit., p.> 383.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Anthony Appleyard
>
> What is the origin of the Cheshire placename Allostock?
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