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• Place names

Names from historical writing:

The following appear as names for the Isle of Wight. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

• The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
• Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
• References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.

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Names for administrative units:

These names were used for units associated with the Isle of Wight. Click on the links for details of the units and their names:

Name	Unit Type	Source
00MW	District/Unitary Authority (UA)	Census of Population (2001 Key Statistics)
E411101	Local Government District (RD)
EAST WIGHT	Rural Deanery	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 786.
HAMPSHIRE ISLE OF WIGHT	Constituency (PCon/CCon)	Boundary Commission for England, First Periodical Report (London: H.M.S.O., 1954)
ISLE OF WIGHT	Administrative County	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 613.
	Archdeaconry	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 786.
	Constituency (PCon/CCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)
	District/Unitary Authority (UA)	Census of Population (2001 Key Statistics)
	Local Government District (RD)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 621.
	Poor Law Union/Reg. District (RegD/PLU/Inc)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 618.
	Rural Deanery	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 786.
	Sanitary District (RSD)	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 618.
WEST WIGHT	Rural Deanery	F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Southern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), p. 786.
WIGHT ISLE OF	Administrative County	1951 Census of England and Wales, Table 3, 'Acreage, Population, Private Households and Dwellings', for 'AC, MB, UD, RD; Wards of CB, MB; CP, NT'.
	Constituency (PCon/CCon)	Richard H.A. Cheffins, Parliamentary Constituencies and their registers since 1832 (London: The British Library, 1998)

NB: These are all the names of all the administrative units which we have associated with the Isle of Wight, and you must judge whether all or even any of them are variant names for the place. They may well include the names of other locations or areas:

• For cities, the associated administrative units will usually include parishes, especially ecclesiastical parishes, one of whose names is the name of the city followed by a saint's dedication, with just the saint's name as another variant. Parish names will sometimes also include "places" within towns.
• Districts usually contain more than one settlement, and some districts had their names changed to take the name of a completely different settlement. As we link each administrative unit to just one of our "places", usually the last place the unit was named after, in these cases the name for a completely different place will appear on this page.
• Similarly, a unit may sometimes be named after a particular settlement it contains and sometimes to indicate its location within a higher level unit. This was very common among British parliamentary constituencies in rural areas, one name referring to their main town and another indicating that they were in, say, the southern part of the relevant county.



Every name listed here is linked to the particular historical source in which it appears, but we cannot claim that these are all the historical names of the Isle of Wight, or that our references are to the first usage of the names. Similarly, we have tried to ensure that names included here are not transcription errors by ourselves, but it is possible they are the result of errors made when the historical sources were printed, or the result of visiting authors or census officials mis-hearing local names.

How to reference this page:



GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of the Isle of Wight, in The the Isle of Wight and the South East | Place names, A Vision of Britain through Time.

URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/17332/names

Date accessed: 23rd March 2025