Since moving to North Carolina recently, I have noticed the word "hurst" added to other words in several city and street names. What is its meaning? Thanks.
Interesting, Ilka. I always presumed it (hurst) had been a Scottish term, since the area of North Carolina where I grew up—the Sandhills area—is full of Scottish ties: Scotland County, Moore County (home of Pinehurst and Aberdeen), etc. In fact, my hometown, Raeford, owes half its name to a certain Mr. McRae (along with a Mr. Ford).
I poured over the map of Scotland and England for a while looking for town names with "hurst" in them, and saw none in Scotland but several in southern England, south of London: Midhurst, Hurstpierpoint, Ashurstwood, Billingshurst, etc. It seems to be an Old English word.
The cognate in German is Horst, but it isn’t used in town names, or at least I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
[quote author=Ilka link=board=etymology;num=1061821017;start=0#4 date=09/03/03 at 14:56:11]The cognate in German is Horst, but it isn’t used in town names, or at least I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
Even less likely to be able to think of one "off the top of my head" am I, Ilka, but the WWW exists and that’s the kind of challenge I can’t resist…
A first search turned up the following:
horst/harst
Bedeutung: Hecke, Strauch, Gebüsch, später auch Flechtwerk; aus idg."*kert", vgl. ahd.mhd.mnd.asächs."hurst", ags."hyrst", asächs.mnd."harst"=Flechtwerk; beschreibt die Schutzumpflanzung des Ortes
The German "hursts" mentioned (possibly amongst others—these are the ones I have tracked down so far) are situated in:
[sup]1[/sup] Schleswig-Holstein
[sup]2[/sup] Nordrhein-Westfalen
[sup]3[/sup] Brandenburg
[sup]4[/sup] Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
[sup]5[/sup] Bremen
Very much "old Anglo-Saxon" territory on the whole, wouldn’t you say? I suspect that the Netherlands town of Horst aan de Maas probably belongs to the same group.
Thanks, Coemgenus. Now I went on a search myself and you’re right, there are lots of them—though difficult to find since Google doesn’t allow a search for word endings and Horst is a common first name.
There are a few villages in Baden with names ending ‘-hurst’. I can’t provide any of the names by heart. Ilka seems to know a search engine that - unlike Google - lets you find parts of a word.
Even the word ‘hurst’ still exists in some dialects of that region, with the meaning quoted first in this thread. ‘Horst’ to my understanding is an eyrie (although I’m more familiar with southern German regionalisms).
No, I just used a trick. I entered common endings of place names: heim, berg, burg, and horst. I tried it again, adding Baden and using -hurst, but didn’t come up with anything.
What I did find was this list of common endings of place names in Germany—on a Japanese site of all places. Luckily we all use the same digits so the site remains interesting even if the page is covered in special charaacters.
OK, while my German leaves a lot to be desired, I was able to locate a site that purports the following:
Die Bedeutung der Silbe
Silbe: horst/harst
Bedeutung: Hecke, Strauch, Gebüsch, später auch Flechtwerk; aus idg."*kert", vgl. ahd.mhd.mnd.asächs."hurst", ags."hyrst", asächs.mnd."harst"=Flechtwerk; beschreibt die Schutzumpflanzung des Ortes
P.S. The site says the place name means "hedge", or "bush(es)". The abbreviations in the Bedeutung section were throwing me for a loop, since I don’t really speak German… Ilka? Spiff?
[quote author=Spiff link=board=etymology;num=1061821017;start=0#11 date=10/28/03 at 08:28:23]Gee, Tim, isn’t that the same text Coemgenus quoted earlier in this thread?
Sorry, Spiff. I neglected to put a link to my source.
Anyway, here’s the key to abbreviations.
As you will see, you guessed correctly except for ags. = angelsächsisch, and the author himself seems to have forgotten to include "mnd." in the list! —I agree with you: it must mean mittelniederdeutsch.
