The place-names of the Liverpool district; or, The history and meaning of the local and river names of South-west Lancashire and of Wirral

The place-names of the Liverpool district – is a book, which was published in 1898 and written by Henry Harrison. This small onomasticon embodies the first attempt to systematize the etymology of the toponyms of the Liverpool area. In various local histories and county histories, attempts have been made here and there to explain the origin of certain geographical names, but such attempts, unfortunately, were too often distinguished by accuracy, other than philological and even topographical. However, they are, as a rule, recorded in this monograph with such criticism and corrections as may be considered necessary. In order to impose more or less generally recognized limits on the so-called district of Liverpool, for the purposes of this treatise it has been divided into two hundred - the district of West Derby, which includes practically the whole of south-west Lancashire, and that of the Wirral, which covers the tongue of land separating the mouth Mersey from the mouth of the Dee. The names listed in the main body of the work, arranged alphabetically in relation to two hundred, have been summarized by the author according to their linguistic origin. The main fact to be drawn from these lists is that in both southwest Lancashire and the Wirral there are about three times as many Anglo-Saxon names as names of Norse origin; and it was to be expected that in that part of the country which was wrested from the British at a later period than is attributed to the Saxon conquest of most of the remaining parts of what eventually came to be called England, distinct traces of the Celtic nomenclature should be observed.