Durham
Meanings
name
- A county in the Northeast of England; in full, County Durham.
- A city, the county town of County Durham, England.
- A unitary authority of County Durham, which replaced the county council in 2009 in all of County Durham except Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees; in full, Durham County Council.
- An English habitational surname from Old English from the city in England.
- An outback town in Queensland, Australia.
- A locale in Canada.
- A community in New Brunswick; named for Lord Durham, Governor General of Canada.
- A community in West Grey, Grey County, Ontario.
- A regional municipality east of Toronto Ontario; in full, Regional Municipality of Durham.
- A locale in the United States.
- A township and unincorporated community in Washington County, Arkansas.
- A census-designated place in Butte County, California; named for California politician W. W. Durham.
noun
- One of a breed of short-horned cattle, originating in the county of Durham, England, and noted for their beef-producing quality.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Old English Dūnholm, meaning "hill islet". In order to get from Dunholm to Durham, two major processes had to take place. Firstly, the n at the coda of the first syllable, dun, underwent dissimilation. Specifically, by influence of the m in the coda of the following syllable (holm), said n denasalised and lenited to the oral r, thus dur. Secondly, after a weakening of the vowel quality in the more weakly-stressed syllable holm, this ending was misanalysed as the similar-sounding toponymic suffix, -ham, meaning home or farm. Doublet of Duresm and Dunelm.
Derived words
Translations
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.