Note 3 — Chapter II · THE MOUND, THE CASTLE AND SOME CHURCHES

The earliest mention of Oxford occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 912. It is there spelt Oxnaforda and Oxanforda, and in Domesday Book it is spelt Oxeneford. Coins from Eadward’s day onwards show that Ox at least was regarded as an essential element in the word, and it is most easy to assume that the place was called after the Ford of the Oxen in the river here. But the easiest explanation is seldom the best. And a rival theory explains the name as a corruption of Ouse-ford, or Ousen-ford, i.e., the Ford over the River. For the evidence is strongly in favour of the probability that the name Ouse was at one time applied to the Thames, which indeed has one of the dialectic forms of the word Ouse retained in it, viz. Tam-ese, though the theory that the junction of the Isis or Ouse and Thame made Tamisis = Thames, is fanciful. The other form of the word is retained in the Oseneye of Osney Abbey, and a tributary stream retains the hardened form Ock. Therefore Ousen-ford or Oxen-ford may mean the River-ford. There is no certainty in these matters, but the latter derivation commends itself most. [See Parker’s “Early Oxford” (O.H.S.), to which I have been frequently indebted in the first part of this chapter.]