Thames & London

The Thames has a wide estuary

Thames = te + em + s. In Latin : Tamesa.

On the Continent there are rivers called Eem (Holland), Eems (border Holland-Germany), Amstel (The dam on the Amstel is now called Amsterdam) and Emme (Switzerland, compare: Emmenthal cheese). There is a major chance that it is an ancient German word for river (Van Dale Etymology Dictionary) There is a probable relation with ama (Latin), amei (ancient Greek) ‘(large) bucket (when fire)’, a word also used in the Middle Ages for a measure of capacity for liquid things [Dictionarium Latino-Gallicum (by Fr. Noel) Bruxelles, 1828].
Amnis: Latin (a) stream, broad and deep river, brook, also abstr. 'tendency' (b) water [Dictionarium Latino-Gallicum].
Modern rivers with similar names include the Ems in Hampshire, the Emm Brook (which flows into the river Loddon and thence into the Thames).

The Amstel, the Eems, Eem and the Thames have in common their sudden widening of the river, their estuaries, where the river leads to or has a basin, a wide body of water. 'Ham' is an old English word for where the sea is hemmed in by land, an in depth elongated bay. The English have an odd reflex to believe that all words came from somewhere abroad. In this case, it is thought to be of Old Norse origin. But the word exists in Dutch as 'inham' (compare: inlet). This means that the word is in fact shared on all Germanic North Sea coasts.

It is actually the same word as 'ham'= bend in the shore, similar to 'ham' = 'from the bend of the knee', cut of meat from the thigh of the hind leg of certain animals, especially pig.

The original river name was Eems or Ames : 'river-with-large-estuary'. The notion 'thames' (te-emse) referred to a specific spot along the river, namely the riverbanks in the London area (aT Ems/Ames), as well as to the adjacent section of the river. The 's' at the end might be a declension or might mean 'water' [3].  So, Temese referred in the centuries BC to a special place on the riverbank, NOT to the (whole) river itself.

Typical for natural estuaries is that their banks are regularly flooded, especially at spring tide. The height of this tide is difficult to predict as it can be combined with a northerly wind and storm. Building a house close to the water is hazardous under these conditions. So people searched for a settling place that was at the same time close enough and safe enough. This place is found more upstream. At a certain point, floods are reduced to a minimum. This place on the Thames river banks is the region of London. That river section was during the Bronze Age called 'Temse' or  'where the estuary (and its floods) begins'.  The Ravenna Cosmography (see below) mentions TAMESE as a place, for it never mentions rivers.

Compound place names remained common in Old English according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The Romans wrote down the words as they were: compound words. An example is Dubris (Dover) : *duo (two) + *ofer (riverbank, shore). Compare with Dutch oever ; German Ufer = shore, riverbank. Notice that *ofer is a word only found in the Germanic languages. Thus Dover = double shore or spit. (more)

As more houses were build there, the place along the river became known as 'Lands (e)t Ames' (in modern English - see lower: London). The location became the most important point where the river could be crossed by ferry. Travellers eventually called the river itself 'Temse' and kept 'Lands' (in modern English) or (in Old-English) 'Landen/Londen' for the village.

When the Romans settled, the word Tamese was already used for the river itself.

The 'h' in Thames is a late affectation, the name is to be pronounced 'Tems'.

There is a city in Flanders, Belgium, located upon the river Schelde, that has the name Temse.  In French: Tamise. There the river suddenly widened in ancient times, that is, before the river was captured (later) between dykes.  The specific location of Temse on the river corresponds perfectly with that of London: where the estuary began.

There is a Temse in Germany, a short natural channel between the river Warnow and the Butzower lake (village of Butzow, Mecklenburg, north-east Germany). Here also it refers to a 'wide water body' (lake).

Humber

There is a remarkable similarity with the river name 'Humber'. In the first part we recognize the same 'ham'. The last part ('ber') means 'brown'. The animal 'bear' is also thought to mean 'the brown one'. A visit to the Humber will convince anyone of its brown color. So, Humber = brown ham, wide brown water. A clear Germanic word.

As the word Thames shifted in meaning from the banks of the river to the river itself, the word 'lands' on the shore gradually replaced it. This could have happen after the 8th century BC. See next :

London

Nobody seems to know where the name London comes from. There is officially no etymological explanation for the Latin name Londinium. What is certain is that it was not the place of Mr. Londin. All names, including family names, had a meaning, and clearly ‘Londin’ means nothing, it’s just a displacement of the problem. An alternative explanation is simple: Landen, if one accepts that the place-name was originally proto-English. ‘Land-en’ (aphonic ‘e’) is an ancient English, but still used in Dutch, plural for ‘land’.

‘Land’ meant originally: an open space to build a home upon, the farmhouse with its surrounding grounds.
Ideal places were sandy soils, as often found near the sea. In the beginning, the word land referred mainly to the building, later the word referred to the terrain adjacent to the dwelling, that is the almost modern meaning. (See previous chapter Vindolanda) 

The explanation would be perfect for the place where London is and quite logical. London must have been called Landen before the Romans came. Probably as a small settlement just before the widening delta of the Thames. A boat brought passengers to the other side of the river. The Romans must have found the location excellent and made a 'big' city of the former village (with a staggering 4000 inhabitants at its peak). For more about that figure, click here. The Roman bridge across the Thames provided the only way to travel north-south without getting into a boat in eastern Britain. The Romans latinised Londen into Londin and added ‘–ium’ for declension purposes (for land <> lond , see below).

Place-names like Landen or with -land occur also in the other Germanic regions. The place-name 'Landen' replaced the earlier place-name 'Tems'.

This explains also the French version: Londres. 'Landen' with '-en' plural was not the only possibility. A more High German '-er' ('Lander') could also be used. In middle Dutch there was some sort of competition between '-en' plural and '-er'. Eventually '-en' would prevail in Dutch. There was a similar plural battle in England: child -> childer -> childeren (children). Some regions used more '-en' and some more '-er' plurals. Later, '-en' became standard (probably in the southeast) and people forgot that '-er' was already a plural [5]. The '-en' plural won the game, just before it was replaced by the now common (and French) '-s' plural. The French understood it was a plural, but must have obtained the name from '-er' users. So they added their own plural '-s' and pronounced it Londers or (today) Londres.

The Ravenna cosmography (700 AD - Vatican codex) refers to TAMESE as a place, not a river, just after LANDINI. However, Londinium Augusti is also mentioned.  The Romans used a place-names list if they wanted to travel from one place to another. One could buy such a list. The Ravenna cosmography is thought to be a copy of a copy of a copy.... of several such lists which themselves were compiled to obtain a worldwide (from Ireland to India) roadbook. This adding up method is confusing and far from precise. The compiling monk had no idea and had probably never left his native Ravenna.
It is possible that Landini was Landen and the Kentish version for London. Landini was never attested as a stand alone place in Britain. The cosmography gives us three names for likely the same city: Londinium, Landini and Tamese. It probably just depended upon where you were in Britain.

There is a village near Brussels called 'Landen'. There are many place names in the Low Countries and Germany with the word 'land' in it. So, London as a place name is far from unique.

Around 1450 AD, English became an official language in Parliament (it had been French between 1215 and 1450) and as a consequence the Chancellery at Westminster decided to regularise the English spelling as a common written language was needed. Among the many words which received a single written version was the word 'lond' which became 'land', although this took a long time to settle ("The Adventure of English", Melvyn Bragg, 2003, pag.98). Clearly, a significant proportion of the English still used 'lond' instead of the modern 'land'.

Therefore, London means 'the houses', as people originally (a few centuries BC!) referred to the few houses owned by fishermen, ferryboatmen, helpers, merchants and some artisans (carpenters, smiths, etc) et al. These 'houses' were situated where the estuary began, at the time the most sensible place: the Tems-place. The full place-name would have been: "the houses at the Ems". Centuries later some people would continue to say 'Temse', not referring to the river but to that specific inhabited place just before the estuary and dropping the obvious 'houses' (=lands) word as has been suggested for a thorpe [6]. But most others split both notions and one part became applicable for the whole length of the 'London river' and the other part became a sort of stand alone place-name which apparently just happened to be split by the river.

Note that the words land or lond (Londinium), tems (Tamisa) are words belonging to the Germanic language group. They do not occur in Brythonic (wrongly called 'Celtic'), nor in any other European language group. They were written down by the Romans long before the Anglo-Saxons set foot in Britain. Read the summary for more information about that.