Noctorum
At the top of this page appears a map which Steve produced
in 2009 and has occasionally been reproduced (without permission) in various
articles. The names are hypothetical (although theory based) and some don’t
have a Scandinavian derivation (and nobody has ever claimed they do). One such
example is Noctorum. It’s generally accepted that the name is derived from Old
Irish cnocc + tírim ‘dry hill’. I don’t know about dry, but it is
certainly situated on the side of a hill – I know because I lived for most of
my childhood at the bottom of Ford Hill in Noctorum and had to ride a bike uphill
to school.
Noctorum
first appears in written records as “Chenoterie” in the Domesday Book (1086)
and other forms include Cnoctyrum (1119), Cenoctirum (also 1119), Kugghtyrum
(1357), Knocktor (1546), Knocktorum (1845) and Noctorum (1882).
https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/Cheshire/Woodchurch/5328368eb47fc4085600209e-Noctorum
In 1892, Wm.
Fergusson Irvine wrote:
“I would first of all deal with that much-discussed township
of NOCTORUM . I think it will not be overstating the case to say that more
shots have been made at the derivation of this word than of all the other place
names in Wirral put together, and so far as my experience goes, I have never
heard one that could be described as even remotely probable. The first
difficulty to most people, after they have got over the preliminary stage of
imagining it to be the genitive plural of some second declension Latin word, is
when a better-informed friend remarks, "Ah ! but you must remember
Domesday Book calls it Chenoterie" (being always careful to pronounce the
ch soft), and that usually brings the discussion to a close.
But let us hazard a suggestion. First of all, from a careful
examination of Domesday Book, it appears that the scribes, in Cheshire and
Lancashire at all events, pronounced the ch like our k, or rather, when they
wanted to signify the hard c, or k, they wrote ch[1]
so we at once find at least a distant resemblance to Noctorum in Kenoterie. Now
to explain away the termination. I think there are reasonable grounds for
believing that an error has been made here by the scribes, and this being so, I
would suggest the following explanation. As you are no doubt aware, the
Domesday Book is believed to have been prepared from reports sent in by various
commissioners all over the country, and the man who had to do Wirral may not
have been a very brilliant caligraphist, and the final curl that he gave when writing
Kenoterum, and which he intended for a contraction for the final m or urn,
was read by the scribe at head quarters, who prepared the fair copy, as ie,
and hence all the trouble.
But whether my somewhat fanciful explanation be the correct
one or not, it is quite clear that if the Domesday folk
called the place Chenoterie, no one else ever did ; for, from 1272—when, in
a document preserved at Eaton, it is written Knocttyrum —to Kelly's Directory
for 1892, where it figures as Noctorum, I have never seen (allowing for slight
variations in spelling) a single instance where any substantial alteration has
occurred in the name.”[2]
The following is significant:
if the Domesday folk called the place Chenoterie, no one
else ever did
This explanation was confirmed by two renowned place-name
experts Eilert Ekwall[3]
(1960) and J.McN. Dodgson[4]
(1972)
More recently, Paul Cavill wrote:
[1] E.g.,
Chentie for Kent, Pichetone for Picton, Chenulveslei for
Knowsley, Chingslie for Kingsley, etc.
[2] Wm.
Fergusson Irvine Place Names in the Hundred of Wirral Historical Society
of Lancashire and Cheshire (1892)
[3] Eilert
Ekwall The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names Fourth Edition, Oxford
University Press 1960
[4] J.
McN. Dodgson The Place-names of Cheshire Part 4, Cambridge University
Press 1972
[5] P.
Cavill Major Place-Names of the Wirral: A Gazetteer in Wirral and its
Viking Heritage ed P Cavill, S.E. Harding, J. Jesch English Place-Name
Society 2000
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