Golborne

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small town in the Wigan borough of Greater Manchester in northwestern England, near the Lancashire border
2. A place name for a town in the Wigan area of Greater Manchester in the northwest of England
3. The name of an English town located in the metropolitan borough of Wigan within Greater Manchester

Etymology: Golborne is a town in Greater Manchester, England, and the name is older than the town itself. It combines two Old English elements: "golde", the word for the marigold flower, and "burna", meaning a stream or bourne. The name therefore describes a watercourse where marigolds grew, a picture of wet meadow that the place name has kept long after the flowers and the landscape around them changed. Old English place names of this type were often coined by settlers describing a feature they saw at the site, so the first element tells us what stood out to them. Marigolds in a damp, low-lying spot were a visible, memorable detail, and the second element identifies the water running through it.