Following the naming scheme of the following examples: St. Albans, St. Helens, St. Abbs, St. Andrews, St. Ives, and so on. How many towns are named like this throughout the entire country. Are there any statistics?
Further, following a more liberal naming scheme, like Abbey St. Bathans or Llanelli, and so forth, how many towns are there?
Further still, how many distinct Christian saints have towns named after them within the UK? There appears to be millions.
What saint is that?
Elli, a Welsh saint. Llan = Church. Similarly Llandudno = Church of St. Tudno.
One could raise the same questions about cities in the United States, or in individual states like California, or just about anywhere else with traditional Christian background. Other countries in Europe, and even Russia, must have plenty too.
In California, most of the saintly cities have Spanish names, from San Diego in the south to Santa Rosa in the north, and plenty more in between. I have a hard time imagining “millions” though.
For cities (at least according to wikipedia)
St Albans
St David’s
(soon to include) St Asaph
Here’s a starting page on Wikipedia for “list of places in the UK” but it breaks down in to many sub-pages. You’d have to go through and do the work yourself to get the number of St-places.
And if anyone wants to do the count for the US, here’s a list of all US post offices (as of 2005) that I put together.
Since many place names in the US are derived from Spanish, you would need to include places like San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and (arguably) Los Angeles (named after Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles).
Probably more are named for churches named for saints than are named directly for the saints themselves.
One you might have trouble matching up: Llantwit Major is named for St. Illtyd – I’ll let some Gwentian explain how they got -twit from Illtyd. LLandaf is of course also after St. David. The dozens of LLanfair- names are all St. Mary, with the Welsh consonant mutation.
St. Albans, Bury St. Edmunds, come quickly to mind.
A cautionary note: In those derived from the Spanish (and I think the French as well), the same adjective set stands for ‘Saint’ and ‘Holy’, so Santa Fe and Santa Cruz are not St. Fe and St. Cruz, but Holy Faith and Holy Cross.
Plus (by the more liberal definition) Peterborough.
For towns, the trickiest part is defining ‘town’. If we limited the question just to England, the list of towns provided by Wikipedia is probably as reasonable as any.
And looking through that list, the answer to the OP appears to be ‘fewer than you might think’. There are nine towns that fit the first definition. There are then at least a further five or six that incorporate a saint’s name in some way - Dinnington St John’s, Lytham St Annes, Ottery St Mary, Petersfield (possibly - it’s not certain which Peter the field was named after), St Mary Cray and Thorpe St Andrew. There is also Wainfleet All Saints. (Maryport and Peterslee are not named after saints.) There are also a few others named after churches, but without a reference to a saint’s name. There may be some other examples lurking less obviously on that list, but where the placename originally derived from someone’s name, that person was usually not a saint.
The very, very broad generalisation would be that this reflects the fact that so many English placenames date back to the early Anglo-Saxon period or earlier. Where they incorporate personal names, the usual assumption is that this was the person who once owned the land. Where saints’ names do get used, it tends to be because an older unit of land holding has been subdivided by the later parishes (e.g. Ayot St Lawrence and Ayot St Peter), or simply to distinguish two places of the same name. But this became less of an issue if those villages expanded to become towns.
Expanding the question to cover the whole UK would be much more difficult - the Welsh cases would be a nightmare!
There is quite an extensive specialist literature on the statistics of English church dedications, which is not quite what you’re asking as such studies usually deal with dedications of all parish churches. It was exactly the sort of research that certain types of local antiquarians were once fond of undertaking. These usually reveal that there were distinct fashions in church dedications over time - local English saints under the Anglo-Saxons, non-English saints after 1066 etc.
What’s your criteria for sainthood? There’s no single authoritative list. Different churches and local religious traditions assign sainthood to different people, and even within a church or tradition there is often dispute over whom is considered a saint. I don’t think the Anglican Church (the only established religion in the UK[sup]*[/sup]) has canonized anyone except for Charles I, nor do I think it maintains an “official” list of pre-Reformation saints.
And how do you distinguish between towns named after saints, and towns named after people who were named after (or merely happen to share their name with) saints? There must be a lot of towns with “George” as part of the name, but a good many of them will have been named after royal Georges and local Georges, not saint Georges. For still others the origin of the name will have been lost to history.
[sup]*[/sup]And even then, it’s established in only one of the four constituent countries. Wilgefortis, say, might be considered a saint in Anglicanism, but not in any of the Scottish churches. So if there’s a town named Wilgefortis in Scotland, does that count by your criteria or not?
Does the OP wish to count all towns named after saints, whether or not the town name actually includes the word “Saint” (or variations thereof)? Or only include towns that actually include the word “Saint” (or variations) in the name?
So, would Petersborough or Georgetown count?
I understood that they would, according to the second part of his question: “Further, following a more liberal naming scheme, like Abbey St. Bathans or Llanelli, and so forth, how many towns are there?” There’s no variation of “Saint” in “Llanelli”, even if you translate it to English.
Of all the problems involved in attempting such a calculation, that is easily the most trivial. In the vast majority of possible cases, the personal name in question is that of the saint to whom the local church is/was dedicated. And whatever definition of ‘saint’ you might want to come up with, it won’t make much sense unless it includes persons to whom churches have been dedicated. Thus, the only sense in which Charles I can be said to have canonized by the Church of England is that some churches have been dedicated to him. In the case of many early saints from England, especially from Cromwell, the fact that they had a church dedicated to them or that they were called saint in a placename is the only thing known about them. They might not even have existed, yet it would be perverse to deny that those places are named after them.
Bad example. George as a saint and a personal name became popular in England relatively late and so the reasons why it is used in particular placenames will usually be known. Similarly, the two examples I’ve already mentioned - Maryport and Peterslee - sound as if they might be named after saints, but are relatively recent creations and it is known exactly who they were named after.
The only real ambiguity in England will be some places named in the Anglo-Saxon period after a landowner who happened also to be a saint and about whom nothing else is known. Or who had the same name as a saint. Some of the sainted Anglo-Saxon queens would seem to be the most likely to have given rise to such cases. But I don’t think that this applies to any English cities or towns. Some villages, hamlets and other lesser placenames might be another matter.
Why? I’m sure there are plenty of saints without a corresponding church, and conversely at least a few churches named for non-saints. But even if you limit your saints to those with a church named after them, the problem simply shifts to finding a list of all churches in the world and determining which ones are named for saints. Good luck with that one.
My example is perfectly fine. I never said that the origin of place names with “George” would be unknown. I said that others would be. I said that the problem with “George” place names is that they’re not always named directly for a Saint George.
Maryport may have been named after Mary Senhouse, but Mary Senhouse was probably named after one of the Saints Mary, or named after someone else who was (or so on). Therefore Maryport could still be considered to be named for a saint, if only indirectly. It’s precisely this sort of ambiguity which I was asking the OP to clarify.
The Ordnance Survey released their 1:50,000 gazetteer containing over 250000 place names for free download a few years ago. It’s available to download as colon-spearated plain text here:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/50k-gazetteer/index.html (click “Order OS Opendata” in the bottom right corner).
They claim it is the most detailed gazetteer available. This could be useful in searching for saintly towns and villages.
Except that “Llan-X” is understood to be “Llan Sant X”. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Llanfair refers to Saint Mary, and the OP specified “named after saints” rather than “containing the word saint.”
There are some that do contain “Sant” such as “Llansantffraid” (St Brigit), but they are the exception rather than the rule.
And the Welsh for Llantwit Major is “Llanilltud Fawr,” so there’s no real need to look to the English form to find the saint’s name in the city name.
Also, don’t forget the Scottish place names like Kirkcudbright (St Cuthbert’s Church), also without the word “saint” but unquestionably named for the saint.
Nonsense. Saints without a church dedicated to them are by definition irrelevant to my point about places named after the saint to whom the local church was dedicated. Moreover, all English medieval churches were dedicated to a saint and that person was usually styled as such in the name of the church. Saying that such persons cannot straightforwardly be counted as saints would be absurd, not least because those who first used such names in local placenames almost certainly thought of those persons as saints. Especially as they usually called them a saint in the placename.
As I myself pointed out, there will be cases where, because of lack of evidence, personal names in placenames might be that of a saint. But, apart from the example of Petersfield I cited, that doesn’t seem to be the case with any of the places that might plausibly be counted as an English city or town. It’s not as if there are many doubts about the origins of the names of most of those cities and towns.
As for towns and cities named after persons named after saints, that is clearly not what the OP is asking about.
This looks like the best bet for answering the question. I’ll take a closer look. Thanks!