"passage," a "going." It
does not even in all cases indicate a shallow passage, though in the
great majority of cases on the Thames it does indicate a place where
one could cross the river on foot. Thus Wallingford was probably the
walled or embattled ford, and Oxford almost certainly the "ford of the
droves"--droves going north from Berkshire. One may say roughly that
all the "hams" were Teutonic save where one can put one's finger on a
probable Celtic derivation such as one has, for instance, in the case
of Witham, which should mean the settlement upon the "bend" or curve
of the river, a Celtic name with a Teutonic ending.

One may also believe that the termination "or" or "ore" is Teutonic;
Cumnor may have meant "the wayfarers' stage," and Windsor probably
"the landing place on the winding of the river."

Hythe also is thought to be Teutonic. One can never be quite sure with
a purely Anglo-Saxon word, that it had a German origin, but at least
Hythe is Anglo-Saxon, a wharf or stage; thus Bablock Hythe on the road
through the Roman town of Eynsham across the river to Cumnor and
Abingdon, cutting off the great bend of the river at Witham; so also
the town we now call "Maidenhead," which was perhaps the "mid-Hythe"
between Windsor and Reading. Some few certainly Celtic names do
survive: in the Sinodun Hills, for instance, above Dorchester; and the
first part of the name Dorchester itself is Celtic. At the very head
of the Thames you have Coates, reminding one of the Celtic name for
the great wood that lay along the hill; but just below, where the
water begins, to flow, Kemble and Ewen, if they are Saxon, are perhaps
drawn from the presence of a "spring." Cricklade may be all Celtic, or
may be partly Celtic and partly Saxon. London is Celtic, as we have
seen. And in the mass of places whose derivation it is impossible to
establish the primitive roots of a Celtic place name may very possibly
survive.

The purely Roman names have quite disappeared, and, what is odd, they
disappeared more thoroughly in the Thames Valley than in any other
part of England. Dorchester alone preserves a faint reminiscence of
its Romano-Celtic name; but Bicester to the north, and the crossing of
the ways at Alchester, are probably Saxon in the first part at least.
Streatley has a Roman derivation, as have so many similar names
throughout England which stand upon a "strata" or "way" of British or
of Roman origin. But though "Spina" is still Spe