Tyldesley

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan in Greater Manchester, north-west England
2. A former mining town in the Wigan borough of Greater Manchester, located in north-west England
3. An industrial settlement in Greater Manchester, England, within the borough of Wigan

Etymology: Tyldesley is a place name rather than a common word, and its history lies in a personal name that is never actually recorded. The first element appears to be "Tild," an Old English personal name that does not survive in any written source, joined with a linking "-s-" and "lēah," meaning a woodland clearing or glade. Put together, the name means something like "Tild's clearing," marking a patch of open ground that once belonged to a person of that name. Such names followed a common pattern in Anglo-Saxon England, where settlements were named after a founder or landholder and a feature of the land. The surviving form points to a place in Lancashire, in north-west England, though the early spellings that would show the name's gradual change are not part of the evidence available here. The word has kept its structure over the centuries, so that the modern spelling still carries the old personal name and the old word for clearing within it.