Survey of English Place-Names

Historical Forms

• ad Dumolan (MS B Domeltun), ad Dumolatan (MS B Dumoltun), ad Dumoltan (MS B Dumoltun, MS C Dumoltan) 930 BCS667 11th

• æt Dumeltan 1002–4 ASWills c.1200

• Dumbeltun, æt Dumaltún 995 KCD692 orig.

• Dumbeltune 995 BM

• æt Dumoltun 1002 KCD1295 13th

• æt Dumeltun 1003–4 ASWills 13th

• Dv(n)bentvne 1086 DB

• Dunbelton' 1221 Eyre

• Dumbelton', Dumbelt(h)one, Dumbeltun 1206 Cur 1216–18 Glouc 1221 Ass 1230 BM 1267 Glouc 1272 Episc 1274 RH 1286 Ipm 1326 Ch

• Dumbilton 1309 GlR

• Dumbulton 1327 SR 1466 IpmR

• Dumbolton 1544 FF

• Dumbleton(a) 13,1202 WinchLB 1287 Ipm 1321 WinchLB 1517 InqEncl 1708 PR

• Dombelton 1277 Episc 1287 Ass 1291 Tax 1292 Episc 1378 Ass

• Dombulton Hy6 AddCh 1460 Pat 1547 FF

• Dombleton 1542 LP

• Dombeldon 1316 FA

• Domulton 1420 Pat

• Dummelton 1580 FF

Etymology

This is in every way a difficult name, partly because of the obscurity of the first el. and partly because of the variation between -tan and -tun in the OE spellings. Although it would be formally possible to associate the first el. with an early loan from Lat  dūmālis 'brambly, overgrown with brambles', such learned loans are rare in p.ns., more particularly when colloquial OE had an adequate terminology.Dumbleton lies below a prominent hill, and like Bredon Hill (Wo 101) this hill is an isolated outlier of the Cotswolds; the hill itself might, like Bredon, have retained an older Celtic name, in this case Dumel , from Brit  *dubo-mailo - 'black, bare hill', v. dubo- (Welsh  du ) 'black', mēl 2 (Brit  *mail -, PrWelsh  mēl , Welsh  moel ). This is a suggestion made by Ekwall, who also explains the OE  forms in -tan as representing the oblique case of OE  tā 'toe', here applied to the northern spur of the main hill; the variant -tun is of course OE  tūn 'farmstead'; presumably the tā was the hill itself and the tūn the settlement below it. But the only OE forms preserved in an original manuscript are Dumbeltun and Dumaltún in KCD 692, and -tan may well be a palæographical variant of tūn .

It is possible, of course, and indeed preferable, in view of the regular ME  Dumbel - forms, to start with an OE  *dumbel , which survives in Midl dial. dumble 'a hollow, a deep shady dell' and is first evidenced in p.ns. from the 14th century (cf. Dimlington (YE 17) with similar phonological problems, Dumble Hole (Wa 90), etc., v. also EPN 1, 137 s.v.); the reduction of -mb - to -m - in the OE  Dumol - spellings can be paralleled by such OE  variants as ācuma for ācumba 'oakum', clim - for climb - in the parts of climban and oferclimban 'to climb', Cumerlande for Cumbra-land in 1000E ASC (MS 1121), cuml for cumbol 'wound', etc. Topographically OE  dumbel in the sense 'shady glen' would appropriately describe the valley running from the village up into the hillside between the two hill-spurs of The Park and Dumbleton Hill.