READERS’ CORNER

I would like to correct your promulgation of a false belief in ‘The Riddle of the Sand’ [June 2021]. The author writes that ‘it’s thought the ... name [Holkham] stems from the Norse for “ship town”,’ without defining who thinks that and without explaining how an element such as ‘holk’ can have had any such meaning as ‘ship’. Holkham was simply a homestead in or by a hollow, as attested by such eminent place-name scholars as E Ekwall ( Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 1936, 1960) and AD Mills ( A Dictionary of English Place-Names, 1991). In modern Scandinavian languages, holk still means ‘hollow’, as a noun or verb.

Tom Geddes FRGS, Dorking, Surrey