When I was a lad, I believed almost everything I read in books, and absolutely everything I read in books published by the English Place-Name Society. So I was chuffed to find, in the section on Dorchester in PN Dorset 1 p350, that Colliton Street was ‘earlier (la) Vlnen(e)lane 1393–1436... Ilnen(e)lane 1401–1428... If, as seems likely, Vln-, Iln- are errors for Vlu-, Ilu-, the first of the early names probably means “elves’ lane”, either from OE elf (WSax ielf) (if en(e)- represents an analogical ME wk. gen pl., v. -ena), or, as Professor Löfvenberg suggests, from the fem. OE elfen (WSax ielfen)’. In those days I was often in Colliton Street, where the absence of surviving she-elves was a bit of a disappointment. But time has brought its compensations, one of which is a full set of the Proceedings of the Dorset Nat. Hist. & Arch. Soc, where in 117 (1195) pp21–50 I find an article by the late Jo Draper on ‘The topography of Dorchester in the fifteenth century’, which includes (pp36–8) a very full form series for this street name:

Vlnenlane 1393

Ulnenlane 1401

Ulnlane 1399, 1436

Ilnenelane 1401, 1408, 1408, 1410, 1413

Ilnenlane 1422, 1428

These are the same references as in PN Dorset but I cannot for the life of me see how Vln- and Iln- could consistently appear as an error for Vlu- and Ilu-. These are borough records and the notaries were writing down the name of a street that they’d known all their lives. I think we can also rule out the possibility that the original editor, Charles Herbert Mayo, mistranscribed the name eleven times over, as Jo worked on her topography with the archivist Margaret King who went back to the originals and confirmed Mayo’s general accuracy. So all the philological learning behind Mills’ etymology has gone to waste.

But does anyone have a better one? I can see that the C14/15 forms might derive from an original ylnena lane, ‘street of the ylns’. But what the devil is an yln?

Jeremy Harte