Chester

from Latin castra, -orum (n pl), camp

A borough of west-central England where the Romans built a fort (castra) to defend the river crossing into Wales. Population about 58,000.

 

One of our earliest loan words from Latin is Anglo-Saxon "Ceaster" meaning city or town from the fact that the Romano-Britons built their towns around fortified camps. See also castle.

In the Colloquy of Aelfric, an early bi-lingual textbook in Latin and Old English the expression

in ceastre is glossed as in civitate, "in the city" and the word for "citizens" or "city-dwellers" is in Old English ceasterwara, in Latin cives. Eventually the word city (through French from Latin civitas) replaced ceaster. But the old word remained in place names like Chester and the various --chesters like Chester, Winchester, Dorchester, East- and Westchester, Chichester, Manchester, as well as the -casters, like Lancaster, Doncaster, and -cesters like Worcester, Towcester, and Leicester which originally and in their original places were Roman camps.

The -coln of Lincoln and the German city of Koln or Cologne come from the Latin word colonia or "colony".

See also CASTLE

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