Is Grimsby a Viking Name? Norse Place Names, Sources and Corrections

Grimsby really is Old Norse: the farmstead or village of a man called Grímr. The endings -by, -thorpe, -thwaite and -toft are Norse too. But our post of 30 August overstated several things, from the Yorkshire Domesday figure to the York bars, and this page says exactly where.

Every claim in our place-names carousel, slide by slide, with its source. Section numbers match the number at the top of each slide. The cover has no number, so the caveat our comments call slide 09 is section 08 here. Where the post was wrong, the correction is below, dated. If you find another error, tell us, with a citation.

What we got wrong

• The cover said "If your town ends in -by, a Norseman named it". Too strong: some -by names were given later, or reshaped from English names. Rugby is one.
• Slide 02 said -thorpe "means you were second". That is the old view. Newer work finds many thorps on better farmland.
• Slide 03 used Bassenthwaite as Viking axe work. It is named after a family called Bastun, a surname that probably arrived with the Normans.
• Slide 05 said "almost half" of Yorkshire's Domesday names were Norse. The real figures differ by Riding, and the county as a whole is below half.
• Slide 04 said "the Norse counted land in units small enough to name after one household". A toft is a house plot; no source treats it as a unit of land.
• Slide 07 said York's gateways "had to be called" bars because the streets took the word gate. In the 1100s and early 1200s they also had names ending in -lith.
• The caption said Grim "died about eleven hundred years ago". Nobody knows when he lived. His name was on the place by 1086, and that is all.

Slide by slide

01. -by: a farmstead or village

Old Norse bý means a farmstead or village, and it covers anything from a single farm to a town. Grimsby is the bý of a man called Grímr, recorded as Grimesbi in 1086. Whitby is Hvíti's farmstead, Derby the place where deer were kept, Selby the farm by the sallow trees, where the first element may be English or Norse.

What we cannot say is when Grímr lived, or anything else about him. The later legend of Grim the fisherman, founder of Grimsby, comes from a poem of around 1300 and is not evidence.

Source: A. D. Mills, A Dictionary of British Place-Names (Oxford, 2011), s.v. Grimsby, Derby, Selby; A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of the North Riding of Yorkshire (EPNS 5, 1928), Whitby; Judith Jesch, Vikings in the East Midlands, on the Havelok legend.

02. -thorpe: an outlying settlement

A thorp was an outlying farm or hamlet that depended on a bigger place. Scunthorpe is Skúma's thorp, Escumetorp in 1086. Cleethorpes is later: first recorded as Thorpe in 1406, the thorp near Clee.

Our slide went further and said the name "means you were second". That was the 1960s reading, in which thorps sat on poorer land. Paul Cullen, Richard Jones and David Parsons studied thorps across England and found many on good arable soils, often compact, planned, and dependent on a manor.

Source: Mills 2011, s.v. Scunthorpe, Cleethorpes; Cullen, Jones and Parsons, Thorps in a Changing Landscape (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2011), as summarised by J. D. Richards and D. Haldenby, Medieval Archaeology (2018).

03. -thwaite: a clearing, or a meadow

Old Norse þveit is literally a piece cut off: a clearing, a meadow, a paddock. Braithwaite is the broad clearing, recorded around 1160.

Our slide called every thwaite "a receipt for a man with an axe", and used Bassenthwaite as an example. Many thwaite names are later than the Viking Age, and Bassenthwaite is the clearing or meadow of a family called Bastun, a Middle English surname that probably arrived with the Normans. The word outlived the people who brought it.

Source: Allen Mawer, The Chief Elements Used in English Place-Names (EPNS, 1924), s.v. þveit, after Lindkvist; Mills 2011, s.v. Braithwaite, Bassenthwaite (Bastunthuait, c. 1175).

04. -toft: a house plot

A toft is a homestead, the house plot as against the fields. Lowestoft is the toft of a man called Hlothvér, Lothu Wistoft in 1086. Langtoft is the long toft.

The slide added that "the Norse counted land in units small enough to name after one household". No source supports that. A toft names a plot, and no source treats it as a unit of measurement.

Source: Mawer 1924, s.v. topt; Mills 2011, s.v. Lowestoft, Langtoft; Gillian Fellows-Jensen, The Vikings and their Victims: The Verdict of the Names (Viking Society, 1995).

05. How many: not "almost half" of Yorkshire

Gillian Fellows-Jensen counted the Yorkshire place names recorded in Domesday Book, 1086. Norse or Norse-influenced names made up about 49 per cent in the East Riding, 46 per cent in the North Riding and 31 per cent in the West Riding. Those counts include hybrids such as Grimston and English names reshaped by Norse speakers.

So "almost half of Yorkshire" was a smoothing, and "the map was still theirs" was wrong: a share of names is not a share of land, and by 1086 most Yorkshire land was held by Norman lords.

Source: Fellows-Jensen, Scandinavian Settlement Names in Yorkshire (Copenhagen, 1972), p. 169, as cited by Richards and Haldenby 2018, note 36. The page we linked in the pinned comment, ramsdale.org, does not contain this figure. That citation was our mistake.

06. -gate: a street

Old Norse gata means street, which is why York's streets are gates. Coppergate is the street of the koppari, the cup-makers or wood-turners, and the Coppergate excavation found their bowls, cups and shavings. Micklegate is the great street.

Source: Fellows-Jensen, JORVIK fact sheet on place names, York Archaeological Trust; Mawer 1924, s.v. gata.

07. The bars: a better story than ours

Our slide said the gateways "had to be called something else" because the streets had taken the word gate. The records do not show that. In the 12th century Micklegate Bar was also called Micklelith, the great gate, and Bootham Bar, the bar at the booths, was known as Galmanlith around 1210. Bar, a barrier, is the name that stuck.

The York saying still stands as a saying: the streets are gates, the gates are bars, and the bars are pubs.

Source: Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, City of York, vol. 2, The Defences (1972), Micklegate Bar and Bootham Bar.

08. A Norse name is not a Norse man

This part holds, and it is the mainstream view: place names map where a language was used, not a headcount of settlers. We would now say one thing more carefully. Some names were given later by English speakers using borrowed Norse words, as with many thwaites. The older -by names in Domesday most likely arose where people actually spoke Norse.

Source: Matthew Townend, Viking Age Yorkshire (Blackthorn Press, 2014); Fellows-Jensen 1995.

From the comments: Rugby

Rugby looks like a -by name and is not. Domesday Book has it as Rocheberie, an English name ending in burh. It appears as Rokeby in the 13th century, pulled into line with the Norse names around it.

Source: W. H. Duignan, Warwickshire Place Names (Oxford, 1912), Rugby; Mawer 1924, s.v. burh.

What we do not claim

• That every -by, -thorpe or -thwaite was named by a Viking settler.
• Any date for Grímr of Grimsby, or anything about who he was.
• That the Domesday percentages are pure Norse names. They include hybrids.

Corrections

15 September 2026. The seven points under "What we got wrong" above, plus the pinned comment's ramsdale.org citation, which does not carry the Domesday figure. Our longer article on Viking place names is being corrected to match.

Keep exploring

• Viking place names: the full article
• The Viking world map: real sites, 793 to 1066
• Real Old Norse personal names, like Grímr
• Look up an Old Norse word

Frequently asked questions

Is Grimsby a Viking name?

Yes. Grimsby is Old Norse: the farmstead or village of a man called Grímr, recorded as Grimesbi in Domesday Book in 1086. Nothing is known about Grímr himself, and the legend of Grim the fisherman is medieval fiction.

Does every town ending in -by have a Viking name?

Almost all are Norse in origin, but not every one. Rugby was Rocheberie, an English name, in 1086 and only became Rokeby in the 13th century. Early recorded spellings decide it.

What does -thorpe mean?

An outlying farm or hamlet that depended on a bigger place. It does not mean poor land: a 2011 study found many thorps on good arable soils.

How many Yorkshire place names are Norse?

In Domesday Book, 1086, about 49 per cent in the East Riding, 46 per cent in the North Riding and 31 per cent in the West Riding were Norse or Norse-influenced, counting hybrids. That is below half for Yorkshire as a whole.