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River Stour, Worcestershire
The Stour 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 in length. It has played a considerable part in the economic history of the region.
==Etymology and usage==
The river-name ''Stour'', common in England, does not occur at all in Wales;〔O.G.S. Crawford, "Celtic place-names in England", ''The Archaeological Journal'' (British Archaeological Association) 2nd ser. 27 1920: p. 144〕 Crawford noted two tributaries of the Po River near Turin, spelled ''Sture''. In Germany the ''Stoer'' is a tributary of the River Elbe. The ''Stour'' is pronounced differently in different cases. The Kentish and East Anglian Stours rhyme with ''tour''; the Oxfordshire Stour is sometimes rhymes with ''mower'', sometimes with ''hour''. The Worcestershire Stour always rhymes with ''hour''.〔Ayto, John and Crofton, Ian: ''Brewer's Britain and Ireland'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005, ISBN 0-304-35385-X, p.1059.〕
The name is of ambiguous and disputed origin. However, ''stour'' is a Middle English word with two distinct meanings and derivations, still current enough to appear in most substantial dictionaries.〔(Wiktionary definition ), accessed July 2009.〕 As an adjective, with Germanic roots, it signifies "large, powerful". As a noun, from medieval French roots, it signifies "tumult, commotion; confusion" or a "armed battle or conflict". Wiktionary also adds "blowing or deposit of dust", the primary definition in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, which adds that this is a northern English and Scottish usage of uncertain derivation.〔''Concise Oxford Dictionary'', 10th edition, Oxford, 2001, ISBN 0-19-860438-6, p.1415〕 Recently it has been suggested 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.〔Richard Coates, "Stour and Blyth as English river-names" ''English Language and Linguistics'' 10 Cambridge University Press (2006:23-29).〕
However, Margaret Gelling, a specialist in Midland toponyms, has strongly emphasised the importance of situating place-names in the landscape. It is hard to see the actual river in dramatic terms. Undoubtedly it has a history of local 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.〔(Taylor, Isaac: Words and Places, London, 2nd edition, 1921, p.143, accessed July 2009 )〕 Certainly Celtic origins are quite likely in the West Midlands and Worcestershire. It is quite possible that the various Stours do not share a common origin and that they need to be considered in their own terms rather than as a single problem. Certainly there is currently no universally-accepted explanation.
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