Exwick History Society
1. The study of place-names has long fascinated people; so much so that it even has its own word: 'toponymy'.
2. Exwick was apparently spelt 'Exewic' in a charter (or a translation from its original Latin) in the time of King Henry II (p.145 'Suburbs of Exeter' by Charles Worthy, 1892).
3. A useful reference to Victorian interest in exploring the many different names for 'Cullompton', is: 'The Town on the Culm', by W.C.Grant et al., for The Church Restoration Fund of St. Andrew's Cullumpton; printed at Tiverton 1985, 44pp, p/bk. Has a similar exercise ever been carried out for Exwick ?
4. Exeter itself had many spelling variations: • The Romans gave Exeter the Latin name 'Isca Dumnoniorum'. • In the Sixteenth century there were several English spellings: 'Exancestria', 'Excter', 'Exancestre', 'Excestrum', 'Excester', 'Eexceter', and 'Exeterra' - see ref. 'An Account of the Sieges of Exeter etc...' by John Vowell alis Hooker., ed. Walter Harte, Exeter 1911. • The Celtic name for an Iron Age pre-Roman settlement at Exeter (if there was one; there may not have been) has been suggested as 'Cayr Penhulgoyt' (prosperous chief town in the wood); this concept dervies from Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century 'History of the Kings of Britain' which interweaves scholarship with story-telling.
5. Besides place-names, the spellings of many other things was not standarised until the Victorian era or thereabouts. For example, the English Medieval names of birds in the West Country (as written at the beginning of the 15th century in the Sherborne Missal) could be written: 'Col mose' for 'Coal tit', 'Wrenne' for 'Wren', 'Roddok' for 'Robin', 'Stare' for 'Starling', 'Tayl mose' for Long-tailed tit, 'Heyrun' for 'Heron', 'Fesaunt' for 'Pheasant', 'Cay fynch' for 'Chaffinch', 'Kyngynsfystere' for Kingfisher', 'More hen' for 'Moorhen, ''Cayfynch' for Chaffinch', 'Waysteter' for 'Wagtail', 'Sparwe' for Sparrow', 'Wodewale', for 'Woodpecker', and 'Gai' for 'Jay'. Ref: 'Medieval Birds in the Sherborne Missal', by Janet Backhouse, for The British Library, 2001.
6. Even the way people spelt their own names varied a good deal until recent times. For example, the surname of Walter Burroughs, a Mayor of Exeter in the early Seventeenth Century, some of whose relatives owned or lived at one time at Exwick Manor House, could also be spelt 'Borowe', 'Borough', 'Burrough', 'Toborough', and perhaps in other ways too !
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the study of names