Deben – the name

How and when did the name ‘Deben’ originate? This is a collection of accounts found, together with a few observations. Some of the older texts are included since the language is delightful.

‘A Dictionary of British Place-Names’¹Mills, A.D. (2003) A Dictionary of British Place-Names. Rev. and expanded ed. edition. Oxford says that ‘Deben’ means ‘the deep one’. This is wrong as any local sailor will know from muddy encounters.

‘Kirby’s Suffolk Traveller’ of 1735²The Suffolk Traveller : Kirby, John, 1690-1753  Available online. states that Deben formed the name of Debenham. This is surely the wrong way around.

‘DEBENHAM, is a Town situate on the River Deben, near the head thereof, and so took its Name of Debenham.’

Kirby’s Suffolk Traveller

The Domesday Book, long before the first mention of Deben lists Debenham, and there are good geographical reasons why the settlement is so named as it sits in a distinct valley. Skeat’s ‘The Place Names of Suffolk’³Debenham does not come from the river, Skeat, W.W. (1913) The place-names of Suffolk.. and the ‘Dictionary of Suffolk place-names’ endorse this view.

George Arnott⁴See W.G.Arnott, W G. Suffolk Estuary : The Story of the River Deben. N. Adlard, , 2D Impression, 195,. and Arnott, William George. The Place Names of the Deben Valley Parishes. Adlard. made a thorough review of documentary sources and mentions the possibility of an earlier name being Adurnus, Colne⁵Other sources place Adurnus on the south coast, ‘Wili’ or ‘Thredling’⁶Thredling – John James Raven (1895) The history of Suffolk. London, E. Stock but these are tenuous connections. Suffolk has few old river names⁷Few old Suffolk rivers – see Dictionary of Suffolk place-names.Briggs, Keith, and Kelly Kilpatrick. Dictionary of Suffolk Place-Names. English Place-Name Soc, 2016. although Eilert Ekwall⁸Eilert Ekwall. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, by Eilert Ekwall. 3rd Edition. says that the Deben would probably have had a distinct name in Anglo-Saxon times although many of these have been lost: Robert Simper has, reasonably, speculated that this Anglo-Saxon name may have been ‘Uff’ as in Ufford.

The consensus is that Deben is a back-formation from Debenham, some of these can be attributed to William Harrison⁹Briggs, Keith, and Kelly Kilpatrick. Dictionary of Suffolk Place-Names. English Place-Name Soc, 2016. in Holinshed’s Chronicles, although this cannot apply to the Deben since he called it the ‘Deue’.

William Harrison compiled the geographical description for the 1587 ‘Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland¹⁰Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland Full Copy at Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland .. : Holinshed, Raphael, d. 1580? : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive and annotated text at The Holinshed Project Texts (ox.ac.uk) and he credits Woodbridge’s Thomas Seckford for earlier work on England’s rivers:

‘For such hath beene my help of maister Sackfords cardes, and conference with other men about these, that I dare pronounce them to be perfect and exact.’

Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,

Here Harrison (See Notes) describes the ‘Deue’ (Deben):

‘The Deue riseth in Debenham,* in the hundred of Hertesméere, and from thence goeth to Mickford, Winston, Cretingham, Lethringham, Wickham, hitherto still creeping toward the south: but then going in maner full south, it runneth neere vnto Ash, Rendlesham, Ufford, Melton, and Woodbridge, beneath which it receiueth on the west side, a water comming of two heads, wherof one is by north from Otelcie, and the other by south from Henleie, which ioining west of Mertelsham, go vnto the said towne and so into the Deue, east of Mertelsham abouesaid. From thence the Deue goeth by Waldringfield and Henleie,* and méeting soone after with Brightwell brooke, it hasteth into the maine sea, leauing Bawdseie on the east, where the fall therof is called Bawdseie hauen.’

1587 Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,

The 1618 Breviary of Suffolk by Reyce refers to the ‘Deane’. The language is a delight:

‘To come vnto the Deane ryver, which ariseth about Debenham from whence it floweth full east to ………. Melton and Woodbridge, beneath the which it entertayneth a brooke arising of two heads the one by Otely the other south of Henly, which vniting west of Martlesham soon after meeteth with the Deane which thus accompanyed passeth forward to Waldringfeild, Hemley where swallowing up Brightwel brooke, it never ceaseth vntill leaving Baudsey on the east it falleth into the ocean at Baudsey Haven.’

1618 Breviary of Suffolk by Reyce

Vincent Redstone gives a rather fanciful account:

Doubtless the very name Deben was the word uttered by the savage Gauls who admired the silvery waters of the river winding through its pristine glades, over the bones of antediluvian monsters, and beds of fossil remains. The flint axe of the neolithic age, lying a few feet below the surface, has been discovered in the working of coprolite beds. Other names for the Woodbridge river were the Deave* and the Thredling. Its tributaries the Fynn, and the Naverne, bear Celtic names;¹¹If, as Redstone asserts, the Fynn and Naverne (the former enters the Deben at Martlesham creek, the latter is now buried under Woodbridge,, had Celtic names it would be odd if the name of the main stream had been forgotten. Modern sources consider that Redstone was mostly wrong in the extract above and below and had departed from his earlier high standard.

Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology & History , Vincent Burrough Redstone. 1897

So up to the seventeenth century, we have the variants Deue, Dene, Dean, Deane, Deave and Deve¹²The OED states that Dene can mean a sand hill or dune by the sea which is not applicable here. ‘Dean’ or ‘Dene’ – coming from Old English ‘denu’ referring to a deep, narrow and wooded vale of a rivulet. .The earliest use of ‘Deben’ so far found is Mercator’s Atlas of 1635 which uses the present name¹³Gerhard Mercator, (1635) just gives river names on pp112 – Historia Mundi: Or Mercator’s Atlas. Containing His Cosmographicall Description of the Fabricke and Figure of the World. Lately Rectified in Divers Places, as Also Beautified and Enlarged with New Mappes and Tables; by the Studious Industry of Iudocus Hondy. Englished by W.S. Generosus, & Coll. Regin. Oxoniae. Printed By T. Cotes, For Michael Sparke And Samuel Cartwright, [I.E, 1635].. This would have drawn on existing sources so unless it was misread or misheard then ‘Deben’ was already in use. One could imagine that ‘Deane’ sounds a little like ‘Deben’ when pronounced with a Suffolk accent as ‘Dea-un’ but that’s probably wishful thinking.

For the tidal river, the practice often seems to have been to refer to it as the Channel, the Ocean or, the Woodbridge River.

• A 1592 Court Roll¹⁴1592  Court Rolls (Elizabeth 32) SRO Ref HD2454-1-3 fol: 6 – Margaret Lake , refers to ‘Rivu[s] vocat Le Channell ‘ where Rivu[s] is Riverbank and there are several mentions of ‘Salt water’ in the same Roll. refers to the river at Waldringfield as the channel. Arnott mentions similar cases. Robert Simper remembered the tidal river being referred to as the Channel in the mid-twentieth century.
• An 1829 Waldringfield Glebe map, probably drafted by Johnson,  shows the river by the village as the ‘Ocean’.
• ‘The Woodbridge River.’ is the name used by Cowper in his 1892 book¹⁵Cowper, Frank, L. Upcott Gill, and A Bradley. Sailing Tours : The Yachtsman’s Guide to the Sailing Waters of the English Coast. Part 1, The Coasts of Essex and Suffolk, Containing Descriptions of Every Creek from the Thames to Aldborough. L. Upcott Gill, 1892. .This was a common usage as in ‘London River’ or ‘Ipswich River’.

The name then has gone from being spelt as Deue to Deane or Deave before becoming Deben. Ekwall explains the changes in spelling¹⁶Ekwall refers to the change of v to b and before the late middle ages, a ‘u’ and a ‘v’ were interchangeable and were the same letter. A ‘v’ was often said as ‘w’ especially if it appeared at the beginning of a word.   ‘u’.  & ‘n’  are particularly hard to read in the script especially when  ‘u’ could also be a  ‘v’. . Reasonably a ‘v’ be heard as a ‘b’: perhaps the name just evolved to its present form. On the other hand, a cartographer may have wanted to avoid duplication as there are already rivers Dean, Dene and Deane elsewhere in England so that may have been when the name was back formed from Debenham. This must have been done after Holinshed in 1587 and before Mercator in 1635.

If there was an Anglo-Saxon, name it has not been traced and so the name Deben is only about four centuries old.

• 1
  Mills, A.D. (2003) A Dictionary of British Place-Names. Rev. and expanded ed. edition. Oxford
• 2
  The Suffolk Traveller : Kirby, John, 1690-1753  Available online.
• 3
  Debenham does not come from the river, Skeat, W.W. (1913) The place-names of Suffolk..
• 4
  See W.G.Arnott, W G. Suffolk Estuary : The Story of the River Deben. N. Adlard, , 2D Impression, 195,. and Arnott, William George. The Place Names of the Deben Valley Parishes. Adlard.
• 5
  Other sources place Adurnus on the south coast
• 6
  Thredling – John James Raven (1895) The history of Suffolk. London, E. Stock
• 7
  Few old Suffolk rivers – see Dictionary of Suffolk place-names.Briggs, Keith, and Kelly Kilpatrick. Dictionary of Suffolk Place-Names. English Place-Name Soc, 2016.
• 8
  Eilert Ekwall. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, by Eilert Ekwall. 3rd Edition.
• 9
  Briggs, Keith, and Kelly Kilpatrick. Dictionary of Suffolk Place-Names. English Place-Name Soc, 2016.
• 10
  Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland Full Copy at Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland .. : Holinshed, Raphael, d. 1580? : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive and annotated text at The Holinshed Project Texts (ox.ac.uk)
• 11
  If, as Redstone asserts, the Fynn and Naverne (the former enters the Deben at Martlesham creek, the latter is now buried under Woodbridge,, had Celtic names it would be odd if the name of the main stream had been forgotten. Modern sources consider that Redstone was mostly wrong in the extract above and below and had departed from his earlier high standard.
• 12
  The OED states that Dene can mean a sand hill or dune by the sea which is not applicable here. ‘Dean’ or ‘Dene’ – coming from Old English ‘denu’ referring to a deep, narrow and wooded vale of a rivulet.
• 13
  Gerhard Mercator, (1635) just gives river names on pp112 – Historia Mundi: Or Mercator’s Atlas. Containing His Cosmographicall Description of the Fabricke and Figure of the World. Lately Rectified in Divers Places, as Also Beautified and Enlarged with New Mappes and Tables; by the Studious Industry of Iudocus Hondy. Englished by W.S. Generosus, & Coll. Regin. Oxoniae. Printed By T. Cotes, For Michael Sparke And Samuel Cartwright, [I.E, 1635].
• 14
  1592  Court Rolls (Elizabeth 32) SRO Ref HD2454-1-3 fol: 6 – Margaret Lake , refers to ‘Rivu[s] vocat Le Channell ‘ where Rivu[s] is Riverbank and there are several mentions of ‘Salt water’ in the same Roll.
• 15
  Cowper, Frank, L. Upcott Gill, and A Bradley. Sailing Tours : The Yachtsman’s Guide to the Sailing Waters of the English Coast. Part 1, The Coasts of Essex and Suffolk, Containing Descriptions of Every Creek from the Thames to Aldborough. L. Upcott Gill, 1892.
• 16
  Ekwall refers to the change of v to b and before the late middle ages, a ‘u’ and a ‘v’ were interchangeable and were the same letter. A ‘v’ was often said as ‘w’ especially if it appeared at the beginning of a word.   ‘u’.  & ‘n’  are particularly hard to read in the script especially when  ‘u’ could also be a  ‘v’.
• 17
  (Note that this is not a river bridge so Reyce was misinformed or not using “bridge” the way we do today)