The names of towns and cities in Britain

A favorable review of a compilation of a work restricted to the names of places in England alone, whether of Germanic, Celtic, Latin, or French origin. It considers not only names of towns and cities, but also counties, parishes, villages, estates, hamlets, farms, rivers, lakes, hills, and bays. The concern has been solely with "the names of those places--towns and cities--in which most people in Great Britain live today," not "for linguistic reasons or because they show a significant geographical distribution or because they illustrate a particularly interesting or dark period of British history or prehistory" or "because they are quaint and curious or demonstrate some particular principle or may serve as examples for an exercise in the study of place names." Though more careful attention to historical phonology might have been desirable, the work remains an honest and on the whole a sound book.