From Grimsby to Bognor – the surprisingly romantic origins of Britain's ugliest place names

It’s funny how a name can shape our perceptions of a place. Would you rather take a weekend break in Grimsby or Royal Leamington Spa? Settle down for your retirement in Scunthorpe or Sixpenny Handley?

But it turns out that some of the UK’s least glamorous place names have surprisingly romantic origins. From a valley of saffron in south London to a lost legend about a fisherman named ‘Grim’ – these are the etymological roots of Britain’s ugliest place names.

Croydon

Think of Croydon and what comes to mind? The setting of Channel 4’s Peep Show, perhaps? The home town of Stormzy? Or maybe its unsightly Tetris-Like skyscraper ‘Saffron Square’, winner of the 2016 Carbuncle Cup for the ugliest new building in Britain?

Well the latter actually harks back to Croydon’s etymological heritage, or at least our best guess at what the name means. 

Some believe that Croydon is Anglo-Saxon for ‘the valley where wild saffron grows’. To pick it apart, ‘crog’ is an Old English term connected with the crocus, the plant which saffron is cultivated from, and ‘denu’ means ‘valley’. It is said that saffron was likely cultivated in the area during the Roman period, to supply the demand for the plant in London, most probably for medicinal purposes.

Alternative theories suggest Croydon might come from ‘Crai-din’ which means ‘settlement near fresh water’ – the word ‘crai’ is found in many places around Kent in the Domesday Book, so not impossible. While some argue that the name actually comes from the Norse word ‘crog’ which means ‘crooked’ – named thus for the winding course of the valley.

Grimsby

The town’s name, it turns out, has nothing to do with whether Grimsby is (or is not) grim, but rather harks back to a tale about two dead kings and a Danish fisherman.

Legend has it that when King Athelworld of England died, his passing wish was for his daughter Goldborough to marry the strongest man in the country when she came of age. Around the same time, King Birkabeyn of Denmark died and a wretched chap named Earl Godard became the carer of the late king’s two daughters and baby son, Havelok (are you still following?).

In a bid to snatch the throne, Godard killed the children and instructed a local fisherman named Grim to take the baby out to sea and drown him. However, when Grim was about to do the deed he saw a birthmark on the baby revealing his royal ancestry. So Grim travelled to England and they landed (you guessed it) at the town we now call Grimsby. Havelok became the strongest man in the country, married Goldborough, and everyone lived happily ever after.

So that’s the ‘Grim’ bit sorted. The ‘by’ belies the fact that Grimsby was a Viking settlement. A number of places in the north and northeast were raided by Viking settlers, and ‘by’ was the old Danish word for ‘village’ (or a larger farmstead than a thorpe) – also seen in the names of Whitby and Wetherby.

The fisherman tale is just a legend, of course, so should be taken with a generous pinch of sea salt. An alternative is that, when broken into three syllables Grimsby is formed of the three Celtic words ‘gri’, ‘maes’ and ‘buy’. That would mean the town is named ‘The Place of the Sacred Mounds’ which could make sense, seeing as there are seven hills of Grimsby (just like Rome).

Bognor Regis

Bognor Regis. Bognor. Bog. It didn’t have to be this way, you know. Back in the early 18th century, when a hatter named Richard Hotham hatched grand plans to develop this stretch of Sussex coast into a resort town to rival Brighton, he initially named it Hothampton. The consensus, however, was that the old fishing village would keep the name Bognor.

So what does it mean? Bognor is thought to be one of the oldest recorded Anglo-Saxon place names in Sussex. In a document dating from the 7th century it is referred to as ‘Bucgan ora’ which means ‘Bucge’s Shore’ or ‘Bucge’s Landing Place’ – Bucge being a female Anglo-Saxon name.

The Regis came later, in the 1930s, when Buckingham Palace sent an unwell King George V to the town to reap the alleged benefits that the sea air would have on his septicaemic lungs. A petition on the name change, drawn up by local residents, was sent to the palace and, so the legend goes, when it landed in the king’s pigeon-hole he croaked ‘Oh, bugger Bognor’.

Legend has it that King George’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, swiftly went back to the petitioners and said “the King has been graciously pleased to grant your request”. 

Staines

Let’s face it. Staines isn’t blessed with the prettiest name in the land. So what does it mean?

The name is quite simply the plural of the pre 7th-century word ‘stan’ which means ‘stone’. It is referred to as ‘Stane’ in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles of 1009 and as ‘Stanes’ in the Domesday Book of 1086. This could well refer to the milestones on the Roman road that ran through the town.

Recently, Staines actually added the very becoming ‘Upon-Thames’ to its name. Local borough councillors convened in December 2011 and voted to change the Surrey town’s name to Staines-upon-Thames by a margin of 25 votes to four. A bid, allegedly, to distance the town from any associations with Sacha Baron Cohen’s fictional character Ali G, and to boost the local economy by promoting its riverside location.

There are other places in the United Kingdom that have tweaked their name. Leamington Spa was given the title ‘Royal’ in 1838, with Tunbridge Wells being crowned Royal Tunbridge Wells in 1909 by King Edward VII. In 2011, Wootton Basset became the first town in more than 100 years to get the royal seal of approval.

Scunthorpe 

When the internet first landed in our homes in the Nineties, the name ‘Scunthorpe’ posed quite the problem for emerging search engines and email providers, as it contains a string of letters that have an obscene meaning. Back in 1996, if anyone wanted to create an account with AOL, their profanity filter stopped them from registering their home town as Scunthorpe (a problem that was soon fixed).

This became known as the ‘Scunthorpe Problem’ – there’s a whole Wikipedia page about it, if you have a spare ten minutes on your hands. So where does the offending name come from?

Like the word ‘by’, ‘thorpe’ was a common suffix in Viking place names, meaning a farmstead where several families would live. The area is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Escumetorp, which is old norse for ‘Skuma’s homestead’. Skuma was most likely the name of the person who was in charge of the thorpe, which later evolved to ‘Scun’.