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Dear Keith, Dear All, On the other hand, there are names and contexts which suggest mōt=‘meeting’. We have ea-mōt, ‘meeting of streams’, not to mention land-mōt and mearc-mōt, plausibly interpreted as ‘meeting of estates/ boundaries’. Mutford is the name of a half-hundred. Many hundreds are named after a ford at which people met, while many others met at a place called mōt + topographic where mōt has the sense ‘meeting’. We can hardly assume that names like Mutlow etc. mean ‘barrow with a toll’ so it makes more sense to interpret Mutford in the same manner as the rest. Nobody, as far as I know, has ever collected tolls at fords, though I suppose this could be an Anglo-Saxon joke. The development ‘toll’> ‘toll-gathering’> ‘assembly for tax-gathering’> ‘assembly’ would be more plausible if the hundredal moot actually gathered taxes, and I don’t think it did. These are all admittedly semantic arguments, not philological ones, and it may be that mōt is indeed derived from a word meaning ‘toll’ and that’s the end of it. But the sense of the word in OE seems to be ‘meeting’. Jeremy Harte From: The English Place-Name List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith Briggs Sent: 12 August 2011 09:35 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: a moot point According to Bosworth-Toller, the basic meaning of mōt is ‘toll’ (http://www.bosworthtoller.com/023191): mót, e; f.(?) Toll, tax :-- Mót ðæs cyninge[s] nomisma census, Mt. Kmbl. Lind. 22, 19. [Goth. móta toll, custom: cf. Icel. múta a fee; O.H. Ger. múta toll: Ger. mauth.] If this is right, can I not interpret Mutford in Suffolk as ‘ford with a toll’? Furthermore, this would imply that the word ‘moot’ comes from gemōt, which must have therefore originally meant ‘assembly for the collection of taxes’. This would be consistent with OED s.v. moot n.1, which does not relate the word to the stem of “meet”, unlike Smith in EPNE (which now look wrong). Keith ******************************************************************** The information contained in this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. The message is intended solely for the addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, or reproduction is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by return e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. Visit the Epsom and Ewell Borough Council website at www.epsom-ewell.gov.uk ********************************************************************