often pronounced -op and -up. The place-names along the Welsh borderland show some remarkable examples of this kind—i.e., places with names ending in -op and -hope. In the east of Radnorshire we find old places named Cascop, Augop, and Hope; in Shropshire, Hope Bagot, Hope Bowdler, Hope Hall, and Hope Sey; in Herefordshire and along the Gloucestershire border, Hopend, Faunhope, Woolhope, Hope, Hope-Mansel, Longhope, Arcop or Orcop, Brinsop, Seller’s Hope, and the Domesday name Gadreshope.
Wigmore, Wormsley, and Ross appear to be names of Northern origin. The old district shire names already referred to are also remarkable. The Scandian termination -ore appears in the names of English and Welsh Bicknor, Yasor, Eastnor, and Radnor.
The Herefordshire Domesday hundred names include those of Radelau, Thornlau, and Wermlau, which appear to be of Northern origin, and at Marden in this county the old Norse custom survived by which in default of sons the eldest daughter succeeded to the whole inheritance.[1]
The Teutonic colonies on the coast of South Wales have been commonly ascribed to the Flemings settling there in the late Norman period. The dialect of Gower and Pembrokeshire, which resembles the West Saxon, shows, however, no trace of Flemish influence. A. J. Ellis, who investigated this subject, says that at most there could only have been a subordinate Flemish element, which soon lost all traces of its original but slightly different dialect, while the principal elements must have been Saxon, as in Gower and the Irish baronies of Bargy and Forth, in the south-east corner of Ireland.[2] A Flemish settlement in South Wales is historical, but the loss of all linguistic traces of it shows that the descendants of these settlers were absorbed among the much larger population of Saxon and Scandinavian descent
