When it comes to British place names, Anglo-Saxon origins tend to dominate in the south and Scandinavian languages in the North, mixing in with Old British or Celtic terms for natural features such as hills and rivers. Wigan demonstrates all three of these influences.
Often towns and villages share common endings such as -tun (settlement), -ham (homestead), -feld (farmland), -by (village), -caester (Roman stronghold) or -dun (hill). The first element is often the hardest to define, with some involving long forgotten people’s names.
To understand where these Wigan places’ names came from, we went looking in the Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names.
To understand where these Wigan places’ names came from, we went looking in the Oxford Dictionary of British Place Names.