Survey of English Place-Names

Historical Forms

• Bereforde 1086 DB

• Berford 1257 FF

• Berfford 1542 ADvi

• Bareford 1545 ADvi

Etymology

This p.n., with others of the same form, offers considerable difficulties. In solving it the places with which we are concerned are Barford (Nf, Nth, O, Wa, W), Barforth (Y), for all of which DB has Bereford and an unidentified Bereford (BCS 466), 12th cent. copy, with good forms. There is also a Barford(Sr), for which we have the form bæran ford (BCS 627), but as the ME  forms are uniformly Bereford one may suspect that this is a dialectal spelling for e . There is also a Beran ford at which Offa signs a grant of land. We have no means of identifying it, but it may well have been the Surrey place itself. For this name (or names) it is possible to suppose an OE  pers. name Bera cognate with OGer  Bero , but it would be dangerous to find that name in all the other Barfords as it is more than improbable that so rare a pers. name should so frequently be compounded with the one element ford . Professor Ekwall (Anglia Beiblatt xxxii, 259) would take the first element to be OE  bera , 'bear,' and refers to the fact that the Romans drew upon Britain for their supply of bears. He refers in further support of this to Barbon (We), DBBerebrune which might contain the animal name, and to beran del (BCS 398) which is similarly possible, and to beran heafod (BCS 120), though the last is more doubtful as there is an alternative form bearanheafod . He might have added as evidence for the bear in England the statement in the Gnomic Verses , 29

Bera sceal on hæðe

eald and egesfull

'the bear shall be upon the heath, old and terrible,'

but on the whole we may suspect that these bears were to be found in the wilder parts of the country, whether mountain or forest, rather than in Bedfordshire, and there is the further difficulty that while there are plenty of examples of ford compounded with names of domesticated animals such as Oxford, Swinford, Horsforth, Gosforth, Enford there is little certain evidence for their being compounded with names of wild ones.We have none with fox, brock, boar, eofor (= boar) and only one or two with hart. If we leave the one, or possibly two, examples of Beranford out of the question, and assume that they may contain the pers. name Bera , we are left with a series of Barfords for which we have no evidence beyond the initial Bere - found in DB. Ekblom (PN W s. n .) suggests that this is OE  bere , 'barley,' but 'barley-ford' does not yield any satisfactory meaning, first because it would be difficult to explain the absence of wheat, rye, bean and other crop-fords, and secondly because with continually changing crops such a name would not be very useful. This suggestion may, however, put us on to the right track. It is clear from OE compounds like beretun , berewic , bern , from bere -ærn , 'barn,' bere-flor , 'barn-floor,' that in OE  the word bere had, side by side with its specific sense, developed a general sense such that it could be applied to all cereals much in the same way as corn is at the present time. In those days of bad roads, when the means of communication often consisted in little more than muddy tracks and ill-tended fords, it may well have been that a road or ford which would carry a good load of corn might be distinguished as a bere - or corn-road or ford. Two old names suggest the possibility of such a compound. In an original charter of 697 (BCS 97) we have bereueg in a list of bounds and this can hardly be explained in any other way than as a compound of bere and weg . There is also the old Barlichway Hundred in Warwickshire, which certainly looks like a similar compound.

To sum up, while it is clear that for one (or possibly two) of the Barfords one must assume a lost pers. name Bera or (more doubtfully) the presence of a bear, it is probable that in most if not all of the others we have a name descriptive of a ford of sufficiently good bottom, natural or artificial, to carry a good load of corn.