English Place-name Society

Survey of English Place-Names

A county-by-county guide to the linguistic origins of England’s place-names – a project of the English Place-Name Society, founded 1923.

Bodebi

Early-attested site in the Parish of Thornton Curtis

Etymology

BODEBI (lost), 1086 DB. This may be an error for Bonby supra , as first suggested in DB 155 and then retracted in DB lxxxvi as being improbable. It is mentioned between Thornton and Wootton and the editors of DB tentatively refer to it as “probably an extinct hamlet in or near the parish of Thornton Curtis”. They point out that “Bodebi is elsewhere the equivalent of Boothby”. It is found with the identical form Bodebi in DB Abbreviatio (PRO, Treasury of Receipts, E 36/284) a MS dated to the first half of the 13th century. Accepting the form, then, at face value, the meaning is literally 'the village of the booths, temporary shelters', from the gen.pl. of bōth and , identical with Boothby (Welton le Marsh) LSR, Boothby Graffoe and Boothby Pagnell Kest.