Talk:River Brit
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Reliable source?
[edit ]How reliable is Bailey's book "The Bride Valley"? He writes,
"Bridport seems, at first glance, to be named after the river Brit or Brid on which it stands; there are, however, no 'Brid' place names up the valley of that little river. Instead the names are all derived from the old name of the river which was Wooth [...]. They include Watton, Wooth Manor, Binghams Farm (which was Binghams Worth) and Camesworth. Place name experts agree that the name of the River Brit came from the town name and not, as usually happened, the other way around."
This seems very dubious, to me. "Worth" is a common suffix in English place names (Tamworth, Kenilworth, Knebworth, Haworth, etc.), which comes from the Saxon for an estate. "Binghams Worth" is surely an example of this -- it makes much more sense as "Bingham's estate" than "Bingham's [the name of a river]". Camesworth also seems to fit this pattern.
Bailey remarks that the River Brit is named after the town of Bridport, because it's unusual for it to be that way round. It would also be unusual for Camesworth and Binghams Worth to be named after the River Wooth, rather than being examples of Saxon -worth names, so why doesn't Bailey remark on that, too? This suggests that Bailey isn't familiar with -worth as a common part of place names, so perhaps didn't consider it when writing. The following reference to "place name experts" would immediately be hit with a "Who?" tag on Wikipedia, and also suggests that Bailey does not consider him/herself to be an expert on these things.