Old English Hula ‘Sheds’ and Hull, Yorkshire

Abstract

Hull or Kingston-upon-Hull is a port upon the River Hull. With a population of over 300,000, it is the fourth biggest city in Yorkshire (after Leeds, Sheffield, and Bradford) and the fifteenth biggest in Britain. Yet its name, like those of other English cities (London, Manchester, Leeds, York, Doncaster), has lacked rational explanation until lately. In 2018 the writer proposed that Hull is not (as long asserted) called after the River Hull, supposedly with an obscure pre-English name. The river is instead called after the town, because Hull derives not from some opaque Celtic hydronym but from Old English hula ‘sheds, huts’. Hull is thus a greater namesake of (Much) Hoole ‘shed(s)’ south-west of Preston, Lancashire.1 As for the River Hull, its old name may have been Leven ‘smooth one’, still that of a village near its source. The original account being a summary one, what follows presents the case in detail.

Keywords: Hull; place-names; Old English; Celtic