Survey of English Place-Names

Historical Forms

• Radun 1086 DB

• parco de Radhom 1343 MinAcct

• Radham Parke, the Hygher Launds, the Lower Launds 1651 ParlSurv

• Reddam Launde 1691 PRWd

Etymology

Radholme Laund, 1771 M, Radun 1086 DB, parco de Radhom 1343MinAcct , Radham Parke , the Hygher Launds , the Lower Launds 1651ParlSurv , Reddam Launde 1691 PRWd. The place is high on the steep slope of a prominent hill and its topography rules out any connexion with OE  hamm or ON  holmr 'water-meadow'. The few forms suggest an old dat.pl. in -um and the later spellings would be normal in Y for this type of name. The name could be from OE  rād 'riding', no doubt in its later sense 'riding track, road'; the long vowel ā was not rounded to -ō - in ME as Bowland was probably in the northern area. The same would be true of the alternative explanation from OE  rā (h )-dūn 'roe-buck hill' (v. rā 1 , dūn ), which is preferable on topographical if not semantic grounds. In this case DB Radun was wrongly regarded as an old dat.pl. and subsequently treated as one. In either explanation we have to assume a shortening of the long -ā -, but this is paralleled by Graydale 212 infra . For -Launde cf. Laund Wood infra .