Wirral Peninsula - Origin of The Name

Origin of The Name

The name Wirral occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Wirheal, literally "myrtle-corner", from the Old English wir, a myrtle tree, and heal, an angle, corner or slope. It is supposed that the land was once overgrown with bog myrtle, a plant no longer found in the area but plentiful around Formby, to which Wirral would once have provided a similar habitat. The name was given to the Hundred of Wirral around the 8th century. In the Domesday Book and shortly afterwards, the name of the hundred changed to the Hundred of Wilaveston, which later became Willaston.

Read more about this topic:  Wirral Peninsula

Famous quotes containing the words origin of the, the name, origin of and/or origin:

    The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.
    Georges Bataille (1897–1962)

    The name of the town isn’t important. It’s the one that’s just twenty-eight minutes from the big city. Twenty-three if you catch the morning express. It’s on a river and it’s got houses and stores and churches. And a main street. Nothing fancy like Broadway or Market, just plain Broadway. Drug, dry good, shoes. Those horrible little chain stores that breed like rabbits.
    Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1993)

    The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.
    Georges Bataille (1897–1962)

    We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.”
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)