From the popular to the puntastic: What's in a British pub name?
From the popular to the puntastic: What's in a British pub name?
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By Amy-Mae Turner
2015-02-16 12:32:05 UTC
In the immortal words of the Bard, what's in a name? Well, if we're talking pub names, plenty. From the King's Head to the Queen's Arms via the odd Shoulder of Mutton, Britain is brimming with public houses with interesting monikers.
These names have evolved over time taking in legends and literature, heraldry and humour, and people and places.
Pour yourself a virtual pint and sup through our selection of pub name factoids. If you have a favourite pub name we haven't highlighted, then share it with the Mashable locals in the comments below.
The Great British pub name
Just as we have affection for the pubs themselves, we love a good yarn about how an inn came to have a particular title. But what is it that fascinates us about pub naming convention? We asked Albert Jack , author of The Old Dog and Duck: The Secret Meanings of Pub Names , to shed some light on the matter.
"Well I think, for a start, most of us in the UK grew up with a pub culture. The good, honest British pub has been part of our communities for generations. In fact for centuries. In many cases the pub has a central part of the community from hamlets, countryside villages, industrial towns and the great cities. Everywhere you go in Britain you will find a pub, if not many of them."
So if pubs have been around for centuries, what were the earliest pubs called? And how did they get their names? Jack explains:
"Dating back to the time when many folk where illiterate, the habit was to paint a picture and display it outside any public meeting place, the pub. This way friends could say to each other, 'meet you at the Plough later,' or Haystack, King's Head, Horseshoe or whatever the sign depicted. This inevitably led to country pubs reflecting the industry of the area. Just as the Lamplighters, Railway Arms or The Weaver's Loom might have done in the towns."
"Later on it became fashionable to honour England's great heros by placing their name above the door along any city street which accounts for the Lord Howard (Spanish Armada) Admiral Collingwood (Battle of Trafalgar) along with the obvious Lord Nelson and Duke of Wellington. And so this all means British and especially English, history is reflected in one way or another through the names of many of our favourite pubs."
"Some of the tales are obvious and some less so. For example, who would know that it was the Marquis of Granby, a hero of the Seven Years Wars with France, who helped to establish many from his old regiment as innkeepers once they had retied from battle. This is why there are so may pubs in England bearing his name. And that is what fascinates us. The way the rich history of England is remembered in such an English way — down the pub."
Most common pub names
Image: Flickr, mj*laflaca
Kings beat Queens, white horses trump black horses, which in turn trump white lions, foxes and hounds are more popular than hares and hounds and swans definitely beat dolphins. We're talking pub name popularity, of course.
Recent statistics from the The British Beer and Pub Association, CAMRA and Pubs Galore have given us an insight into the most common names for taverns in the UK.
The exact order varies from report to report, but we've amalgamated the results to come up with the top 12 names that appeared across the three lists. They are: The Red Lion, the Crown, the Royal Oak, the White Hart, the Swan, the Plough, the White Horse, the New Inn, the King's Arms, the King's Head, the Queen's Head and the Bell.
Longest and shortest pub names
Image: Facebook The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn
In what must be a super-clever marketing ploy by the latterly opened establishment, incredibly you could start your evening in the pub with the shortest name in the UK and end it in the pub with the longest name (although if you're planning on boasting about it on social media, you might want to do it the other way round).
This is because both pubs are in Stalybridge , in Tameside, Greater Manchester. The Guinness Book of Records has recognised the longest named pub as "The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn" on Astley Street and the shortest as The "Q" Inn on Market Street.
The pub with no name
Image: Flickr, Owen Massey McKnight
There are various "pubs with no name" scattered across the UK, but argubably the most famous does in fact have a name. It would be more accurate to call this Hampshire drinkery "The Pub With No Sign" as legend has it the locals, not wanting to share their favourite watering hole with passing traffic, repeatedly tore down the White Horse's 's pub sign to ensure its relatively-hidden location stayed a secret.
Unusual pub names
From " Poosie Nansie's " in Mauchline, Scotland, (named after the once landlady, and likely madam, Nancy Gibson) to the " I Am The Only Running Footman " in Mayfair, London, (named for the manservants that used to precede aristrocrat's carriages) Britain is chock-full of pubs with fascinatingly unusual names.
We asked Albert Jack if he had a favourite name from the "unusual" category. "There are so many to mention. The Red Lion is the most common pub name and that numbers only around 7,000 of the 50,000-plus pub across the country. So, you can see there are so many one-offs from the remaining number that probably reflect only a very local event, tale, legend or fable."
"The Bucket of Blood is a good one and the Drunken Duck is also a good, one-off story. But in almost every area there will be a strange, new pub name that has something to do with the local history. Perhaps even of the building itself. And those stories are always worth finding out."
Jack's suggestions for excellent unusual names are spot-on for classic back stories. The " Bucket of Blood's " gory name comes from a local legend about the landlord of lore drawing a bucket of bright red water from the pub's well. The story goes that it was in fact blood — from a corpse that had been thrown into the well shaft.
The Drunken Duck's tale dates to Victorian times when the landlady of the Inn found her ducks lying on the grounds of the pub, apparently dead. She began plucking and preparing to cook them when they started to come back round. It seems the ducks had been drinking from a leaky barrel of bear and were in fact, just inebriated.
The pub's website now explains that "according to local legend, the landlady, full of remorse for the rough treatment, provided the de-feathered birds with knitted waistcoats of Hawkshead yarn until their feathers grew back again."
Pub name changes
While some pub names are notable for having remained the same for centuries, others are fascinating because of the reasons why they were changed.
Some time between 1876 and 1892 the Bull's Head became the rather more intriguing " Bull and Spectacles " after an intoxicated patron scaled the pub to place his glasses on the bull's head mascot and left them there.
The "Dog and Duck" in Bloomsbury, London, changed its name to the " Museum Tavern " after the British Museum was built opposite it in the 1760s.
Other changes are due to historical events. "The Man in the Moon" in Northfield, Birmingham made one small change to "The Man on the Moon" for giant reasons in 1969.
More recently, the "Prince of Wales" in Merton changed its name to the "Princess of Wales" following the death of Diana in 1997. It then u-turned back to its original name in 2010.
Pub name puns
Image: uptonpark
If you saw a sign for the "Barge Inn" would it make you smile? What about the "Hop Inn," the "Letters Inn" or the "Dew Drop Inn?" If they didn't make you groan, then the fact there really is a " Fawcett Inn " should.
"I don't think there are any good puns, only slang and usually offensive," says Jack, not a fan of the pub pun genre. "Although the 'Eagle and Child' (famous for hosting the 'Inklings' meetings of Oxford writers during the 1940's and 50's) is also known as the 'bird and brat, 'fowl and foetus' or the 'bustard and bastard,' I am not sure how much of a pun any of those are but perhaps close."
Finally, Jack highlights another punny name that he is unimpressed with, although we have to admit it did make us smile:
"There is also 'The Office,' so drinkers can tell their partners they are 'still in the office' without lying."