Another name for a hill-top appears in Peak, Pike, Peck, or Pick, but
the many compounds in Pick-, e.g. Pickbourne, Pickford, Pickwick,
etc., suggest a personal name Pick of which we have the dim. in
Pickett (cf. Fr. Picot) and the softened Piggot. Peak may be in some
cases from the Derbyshire Peak, which has, however, no connection with
the common noun peak. A mere hillock or knoll has given the names
Knapp, Knollys or Knowles, Knock, and Knott. But Knapp may also be
for Mid. Eng. nape, cognate with knave and with Low Ger. Knappe,
squire--
"Wer wagt es, Rittersmann oder Knapp'.
Zu tauchen in diesen Schlund?"
(Schiller, Der Taucher, 1. I.)
Redknap, the name of a Richmond boat-builder, is probably a nickname,
like Redhead. A Knapper may have lived on a "knap," or may have been
one of the Suffolk flint-knappers, who still prepare gun-flints for
weapons to be retailed to the heathen.
Knock and Knocker are both Kentish names, and there is a reef off
Margate known as the Kentish Knock. We have the plural Knox (cf. Bax,
Settlements and Enclosures, Chapter XIII). Knott is sometimes for
Cnut, or Canute, which generally becomes Nutt. Both have got mixed
with the nickname Nott.
A green knoll was also called Toft (Scand.), whence Langtoft, and the
name was used later for a homestead. From Cliff we have Clift,
[Footnote: This may also be from Mid. Eng, clift, a cleft.] with
excrescent -t, and the cognates Cleeve and Clive. Compounds of
Cliff are Radcliffe (red), Sutcliffe (south), Wyclif (white). The
c- sometimes disappears in compounds, e.g. Cunliffe, earlier Cunde-clive,
and Topliff; but Ayliffe is for AElfgifu or AEthelgifu and Goodliffe
from Godleof (cf. Ger. Gottlieb). The older form of Stone appears in
Staines, Stanhope, Stanton, etc. Wheatstone is either for "white
stone" or for the local Whetstone (Middlesex). In Balderstone,
Johnston, Edmondstone, Livingstone, the suffix is -ton, though the
frequence of Johnston points to corruption from Johnson, just as in
Nottingham we have the converse case of Beeson from the local Beeston.
In Hailstone the first element may be Mid. Eng, half, holy. Another
Mid. English name for a stone appears in Hone, now used only of a
whetstone.
A hollow or valley in the hillside was called in the north Clough,
also spelt Clow, Cleugh (Clim o' the Cleugh), and Clew. The compound
Fairclough is found corrupted into Faircloth. Another obscure
northern name for a glen was Hope, whence Allsop, Blenkinsop, the
first element in each being perhaps the name of the first settler, and
Burnup, Hartopp, (hart), Harrap (hare), Heslop (hazel).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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