The Stour /ˈstaʊər/ is a river flowing through the counties of Worcestershire, the West Midlands and Staffordshire in the West Midlands region of England. The Stour is a major tributary of the River Severn, and it is about 25 miles (40 km) in length. It has played a considerable part in the economic history of the region.
The river-name Stour, common in England, does not occur at all in Wales;[1] Crawford noted two tributaries of the Po River near Turin, spelled Sture. In Germany the Stoer (Stör) flows into the River Elbe. The name Stour is pronounced differently in different cases. The Kentish Stour rhymes with tour; the Oxfordshire Stour is sometimes rhymes with mower, sometimes with hour. The Worcestershire and Suffolk Stour always rhyme with hour.[2]
The origin of the name(s) remains in dispute. The Middle English word stour has two distinct meanings and derivations, still current enough to appear in most substantial dictionaries. As an adjective, with Germanic roots, it signifies “large, powerful”. As a noun, from medieval French roots, it signifies “tumult, commotion; confusion” or an “armed battle or conflict”. The primary definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary is “blowing or deposit of dust”, a northern English and Scottish usage of uncertain derivation.[3] Recently it has been suggested by Richard Coates that an Old European river-name was taken for an Old English adjective and that stour came to represent one pole of a structural opposition, with blyth at the opposite pole, allowing Anglo-Saxons to classify rivers on a continuum of fierceness.[4]
However, Margaret Gelling, a specialist in Midland toponyms, emphasises the importance of situating place-names in the landscape. It is hard to see the river in dramatic terms. Undoubtedly it has a history of flooding and can rise quickly after rain, but it is unlikely that anyone familiar with the Severn, into which it flows, could see the Stour as embodying raw power or turbulence. The Victorian etymologist Isaac Taylor, now long discredited on many counts, proposed a very simple solution: that Stour derives from dŵr, the Welsh word for water.[5] (Celtic origins are quite likely in the West Midlands and Worcestershire.) It is possible that the various Stours do not share a common origin or significant characteristics, requiring each to be considered on their own terms. Certainly there is currently no universally-accepted explanation.
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