The Stour

The Etymology of the River Iwerne

A study by Peter Irvine of Dorset Wildlife Trust's Otter Group

William Barnes had a particular interest in Dorset place-names of Celtic origin and in a paper published in 1881 he made the suggestion that the name Iwerne is related to two Welsh words yw, meaning spring or head of a stream, and wern meaning 'moor' in the sense, not of 'moorland', but 'water-soaked land' as in the Blackmore Vale. He refers to the Welsh name for the alder, y pren wern - the moor tree. So he suggested the name Iwerne means the Moorbrook. Although many of Barnes' ideas regarding the origins of place-names including this one would not be accepted today he was something of a pioneer in this field and his writing on the subject reveals a characteristic originality of thought and, for the time, an impressive knowledge of linguistics.

Ekwall ('English River Names', 1928) suggested a different meaning based on the Celtic word for the yew tree with a suffix meaning river. Iwerne - the Yew river or the stream which rises at a place where yew trees grow.

AD Mills in 'The Place-Names of Dorset' (Pt. 1, 1977) does not make any new suggestions of his own, referring the reader to Ekwall's study. Apparently river-names will be covered in the concluding volume of the series where there will obviously be an opportunity to discuss the most recent ideas on the subject.

However ALF Rivet and Colin Smith in 'The Place-Names of Roman Britain' (1979) refer to two papers published in the 1940s which reject Ekwall's proposed etymology. In one Professor O'Rahilly links river-names of this type (the old name for the Kenmore river in Ireland Ivernus is another example) with Celtic goddess names such as Evema 'recalling that river-names and divine names often coincide because the river is the manifestation of the deity'. O'Rahilly suggests that the goddess name 'would thus appear to mean "she who travels regularly, she who moves in a customary course", from which we infer that the goddess so designated is the sun-goddess...'. [if the Iwerne ran east-west, following the course of the sun, this would add a nice piece of supporting evidence- unfortunately it runs north-south!]

The Iwerne is referred to in Rivet and Smith's book because of an intriguing reference in a document known as the Ravenna Cosmography. Compiled early in the eighth century it consists of a series of lists of place and river names in the Roman Empire and authorities agree that the section which covers Britain is largely based on a detailed Roman map which the author of the work had the opportunity to study in Ravenna but which has now been lost.

The name Ibernio is mentioned as part of a list of places in south-west Britain. It appears in the list next to Bindogladia, an alternative form of Vindocladia (identified with the Roman settlement at Badbury Rings) which suggests it is in the same area. William Barnes made the link with the River Iwerne in his paper mentioned above, suggesting that lbernio was the name of the Roman fort on Hod Hill which lies next to the stream. However the Roman map is believed to have been fourth century in date and it is now known that the fort was abandoned in the first century A.D.

Nearly twenty years after Barnes' paper appeared General Pitt-Rivers excavated a Roman building near Iwerne Minster which he identified as the lbernio of the Ravenna Cosmography. Although quite a sophisticated building it cannot really be described as a villa of a status high enough to warrant mention; which does pose the intriguing question - if lbernio and the River Iwerne were one and the same why was a small Dorset stream included on the Roman map? One explanation may be that a more substantial Roman building awaits discovery in the area.

Saxon Charters

Apart from the Ravenna Cosmosgraphy the earliest known authentic documentary reference to the River Iweme is an Anglo-Saxon Boundary charter dated 958 which refers to Iwern broc at a point along the boundary not far from the village of Iwerne Courtney (quite near one of my otter monitoring sites!). The same charter mentions Cranemere 'the pond of the herons' as being not far to the west - possibly the same location where I have seen herons in recent years.