ESSEX RIVERS AND THEIR NAMES.
281
is John Norden's MS. "Description of Essex," compiled in 1594
for Robert Earl of Essex and now in the British Museum.9 For
more recent times, we have many county maps showing our
rivers. By far the best of these maps (apart from those of the
Ordnance Survey) are Saxton's "Essexia," published in 1576,
and Chapman & Andre's large and splendid map, published in
1777. A good many Essex rivers are also shown on Jeffery's
map of English rivers, published about 1720.10 These throw
little light on the origins of our river-names; but they serve,
on the other hand, to show clearly how extremely-modern most
of those names are.
In the second place, as one studies the names of our rivers,
one comes more and more to the conclusion that very few of the
names they bear to-day are their real and original names—that
most of them are modern "back-formations" (as the term is)
of one kind or another and of no historical value. One kind
of back-formation of which we have in Essex several examples
is that in which a river—sometimes a river of some importance—
has been found to be nameless, either because it never had a
name or because, having formerly had a name (probably Keltic),
that name has been forgotten and, for convenience, a new name
deliberately invented for it. In some cases, this was done,
apparently, as far back as Anglo-Saxon times; but, in the
great majority of cases, it has been done in very-recent times—
mostly since the beginning of last century. Such invented names
have been derived, as a rule, either from the name of some ford
through the river (for, in early times, fords were of such im-
portance that most of them had names of their own) or from
some place on the river's banks, which place had originally, in
some cases, derived its name from the forgotten original name
of the river. Such complicated back-formations are, say
Mawer and Stenton11 "particularly common in the East
"of England, where comparatively few old names of rivers
"are preserved."
We know very little, therefore (as stated already), as to the
real and original names of our rivers; but, by careful study of
their existing names, we are able, in some cases, to infer what
those names were.
9 Grenvile MS. 33768 (printed by the Camden Soc., 1840).
10 A New Map of all the Rivers of England and Wales, . . . by John Jefferys, junior, in
the Great Almonry, near Dean's Yard, Westminster (undated).
11 Introd. to Survey of English Place-names, p. 23 (1924).