Quote Originally Posted by PixelFish View Post
Village -smaller than town, bigger than a hamlet. We're starting to get back to agrarian communities, and villages are more likely to practise their own food production. Historically villages might have a church, but not a town hall or the larger apparatus of government. -by is a very common suffix for villages and seems to derive from the Scandanavian countries, but is seen in English speaking areas as well. (Scoresby, Maltby, etc)
Many geographical names in the English midlands comes from the vikings/norsemen - including the -by suffix in England. A fun fact is that many streets in the midlands/northern England are calles "gates" - from the scandinavian word for street: gata/gate. According to wikipedia: "Around 600 English words we speak today come from old Norse for example ‘ill’ ‘egg’ ‘die ‘knife’ and ‘take.’".