Thanks for the info, Pete G. I certainly take your point about the Neolithic names not being known for sure. But I do have to say that the present names are all we have to go on. In the absence of any other evidence it seems reasonable to go with the evidence that <i>is</i> there. Also, it seems unlikely to me that the Anglo-Saxons would come and change the place names <i>that</i> drastically. Nobody would know where they were! The people wouldn't use new names unless they bore some resemblance to the old. Also, we all share a common linguistic ancestry. There's a great deal in common between, say, Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon. We're all from the same Indo-European root. And of course the further back in time you go the more in common there is. Its likely that the Anglo-Saxon invaders would have found a good proportion of our place names quite meaningful and therefore seen no need to change them.

There's a hill near where I live called Baal Hill (and you can imagine what I make of that name!). The locals, though, are slowly reinventing this place name. At best they don't understand what Baal means. At worst, they've heard the name in the Bible and are a bit frightened of it (bearing in mind that this valley has a strong Wesleyan Methodist tradition - don't get me started on bloody Wesley)! And so this hill is slowly becoming known as Bayle Hill. In the local dialect (and believe me, the dialect here is unique to this valley!) the word "Bayle" means "a coppiced woodland". What's happened, in effect, is that the old name has become meaningless (and/or scarey) to the locals and so they're changing it to the nearest word that means something to them. Is it unreasonable to suggest that this is the mechanism through which changes in place names naturally occur?