Scarborough

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A historic seaside resort on the North Sea coast of North Yorkshire, England ; a former borough and now a large suburban district in the east of Toronto, Ontario
2. A coastal holiday town in North Yorkshire in northern England ; an eastern district of the Canadian city of Toronto that was once its own municipality
3. A traditional North Sea resort town in northern England ; a sprawling residential area on the eastern side of Toronto in Ontario, Canada

Etymology: Scarborough is a seaside town on the Yorkshire coast of England, and its name is a Viking-age compound. It comes from the Old Norse personal name Skarði joined to "borg", meaning "fortress". The name therefore records a settler, or a local lord named Skarði, and the fortified place he held. The second element is the part that has lasted. "Borg" appears across the Norse-settled parts of England in place names, where it marks a defended site rather than a town in the later sense. Here the fortress sat on high ground above the North Sea, and the name stuck to the place even as the defences disappeared. Because the first element is a personal name, the town's identity is tied to a man rather than to a landscape feature. Few English place names of this type keep a clearly recognisable Scandinavian personal name at their front in the way this one does.