ENGLISH placenames have a reputation for sounding like something that they are not.

So the Yorkshire village of Foul Rice should have something to do with paddy fields, while Commondale in Cleveland should be a valley with common land. But nothing is ever this simple where placenames are concerned.

In fact, Foul Rice meant Bad Brushwood in Anglo-Saxon (Fulhris) and Commondale was, when the name was first given, Colman’s Dale, a reminder these of how words get twisted out of shape and original meanings are lost.

Another memorable northern example of this twisting comes with the name of the picturesque village of Bearpark, just outside Durham.

What, after all, could Bearpark be but a place where some local dignitary, the bishop of Durham for instance, allowed his menagerie of bears to run around? We could write a novel on the basis of that alone. Perhaps, indeed, someone already has!

However, the true and original spelling, before our ancestors let their tongues loose on the problem, was Beaurepaire, a French name meaning Beautiful Retreat, given to a monastery of the priors of Durham, with not a grizzly in sight – the monastery lies just to the north of the modern village.

It was only in the sixteenth century that the locals gave up all pretence of trying to pronounce the French word, creating its present furry form. And just for the record there were once British bears.

In the Roman period they were even carted off to Rome for gladiator shows. But they died out soon after the Romans left our island and not one British or Irish placename recalls them.

● Simon Young is a historian and author of AD500.