Stur. This is a Northern name, a well-known example of it being that of Snorri Sturluson, the earliest Icelandic author. If we consider the names of the streams which are the feeders of the Stour, and the names of places along the course of that river and its tributaries, we may recognise the Scandinavian origin of nearly all of them. The Cale, the two Loddons or Liddons, and the Winterborne, are tributaries, while there are two places named Stourton, three places named Stour, and two named Sturminster. The name Stur is also significant in another way. There was a river Stör which was one of the boundaries of Stormaria, north-east of Hamburg, and that was a Wendish tribal district. This leaves little room for doubt concerning the Scandian or Wendish origin of some place-names in the valley of this Dorset river. Gilling is a name connected with Norse mythology, and occurs in the Dorset name Gillingham.
With this evidence before us, it is not surprising to find a Norse name used for the Wendish people settled on the western side of the Stour valley. It would have been strange, supposing such people had been settled there, if they had been called by any other name than the Scandinavian name for their tribe—viz., Winthr or Windr.
The use of the patronymic termination -ing in such names as Wintringa-tun[1] or Wintrington in Lincolnshire, and Wintrington in Dorset,[2] are clearly cases in which Wintr must have been used in a personal sense, as the name for the head of a family or clan. Similarly, -inga in Wintringa-tun denotes the descendants of a Wintr. In such instances the name can have no reference to winter, the season. There were other Wintr place-names in Dorset and Wilts in the Saxon period which had no reference to bourns: Winterburge geat,[3] Wilts; Windresorie, Windelhā, Windestorte, Winfrode, and Winlande—all Domesday names. The name Windelhā[4]
