Littlebury

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small village in the county of Essex in eastern England ; a family name of English origin carried by people with this surname
2. An English village located in Essex, in the east of England ; a surname derived from English place names
3. A rural settlement in Essex, England ; a hereditary family name borne by people of English descent

Etymology: Littlebury is a village in north-west Essex, and its name is a plain piece of Old English: "lytel" meaning "little" joined to "byrig", the dative form of "burh", meaning a fortified place or settlement. The sense is simply "little fortified place" or "little manor", a name given to a small settlement compared with a larger neighbour. Essex has many place names built this way, pairing a size word with a settlement word. The name is also worth a look for a curious relationship. The same two elements, in the form "lytel" and "burh", produced Littleborough, a town in Greater Manchester with a name of identical construction, so the two are separate places that grew from the same pattern of naming. Littlebury's name thus records the ordinary Anglo-Saxon habit of marking a settlement as small, not any single historical event.