Chatburn

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small village in the Ribble Valley district of Lancashire, in northwest England
2. A rural village located in Lancashire in the north of England, within the Ribble Valley area
3. A settlement in the county of Lancashire in northwestern England, situated near Clitheroe

Etymology: Chatburn is a village in Lancashire, and its name is older than almost anything else you could say about it. It combines the Old English personal name Ceatta, a man's name, with "burne," meaning stream, brook or small river. The name therefore preserves a person's name attached to a watercourse, so that the place was in effect "Ceatta's stream." Old English place names of this pattern are common across England, where a settler or landholder's name was fixed to a local feature of the land. Here the second element survives in the modern spelling of the village, while the first element is now recognisable only to specialists as a personal name. The word "burn," used for a stream, is still current in Scottish and northern English dialect, which is why this element has lasted so well in northern place names.