Q: Can All the Shire Place-names Be Found in England?
ANSWER: I do not know English Toponymy well enough to answer this question adequately but you can certainly find many candidates for comparative analysis. For example, there is a city or town called “Stourbridge” to the west of Birmingham. The etymology of stour is quite interesting, going back to ancient Germanic roots (and perhaps further). It is only pronounced like stoor (according to one source I found) in southeastern England (the Kent area), but in other parts is supposedly pronounced like st-(h)our or st-ore. The Stour river flows through the West Midlands, and that all sounds very Stoorish/Bucklandish to me.
Speaking of the Buckland, there is a place-name Buckland near Oxford. There is also a village called Bucklebury in West Berkshire. On the other hand, some place-names may post-date Tolkien for all I know. For example, when was Hobbiton Road in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset given its name? Would Tolkien really have heard of it if this is an old name? People local to that area should know the history of the road’s name, I suppose (but that may not always be the case — for example, I doubt many people know that a road where my grandfather lived was named for him but mis-spelled by the US Postal Service).
I found a place called “Browns Hedge” in Pitstone (northwest of London). Apparently there is really a brown hedge there. I have no idea of how old the hedge or the name may be, but I could not help but think of Rhosgobel, which Tolkien translated as brown hay. In his usage a “hay” is a (protective) hedge (there are several examples of such hedges in his books).
The names “Woody End” and “Bywater” also appear in numerous locations throughout England. Again, I have no idea of how old these place-names may be or whether any were influenced by Tolkien.
“Calenard” (similar to Calenardhon) is a French name, by the way — and that is a complete digression. Nonetheless, you can find Dunland is a surname from the Devon area. I guess there is something Celtic about these place-names after all.
I have not read it but earlier this year Walking Tree Publishers issued Hobbit Place-names: A Linguistic Excursion through the Shire by Rainer Nagel. The book delves into exactly this type of question and I should probably add it to my collection. Those of you who are interested in the connections between Tolkien’s Shire place-names and real English names (and it seems there are quite a few of us) will probably enjoy this excursion into Shire-English Toponymy.
UPDATE: I received the following message in November 2018:
May I respectfully draw your attention to some background uncovered about Buckland both in The Fellowship of the Ring and in Breconshire?
http://www.talybont.com/genesis.html
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