There are a lot of French influence in England's place names (and the language in general) from the couple of centuries after 1066 when the Normans ruled the roost.

Town names in England are full of historical quirks that don’t sound like modern English - try browsing a map, it’s fun. Some of its place names are thousands of years old.

Even names that seem very English now, like “York”, only seem that way because of their long historical presence. The town of that name started out around 70 CE as the Roman fortress Eboracum, which was a Latinized version of a Celtic name.

Later, around 600 CE, the Anglo-Saxons reinterpreted the name as Eoforwic, because “eofor” meant “boar” in Old English, although the earlier name had nothing to do with boars, other than sounding similar.

Then the Vikings came along in the 860s and called it Jórvík, an Old Norse adaptation of Eoforwic.

Around 1000 CE, after the Norman conquest, the name was shortened to York. That has no meaning in English, other than the place name and its derivatives. Fundamentally, it’s no more or less English than Matravers.

> Langton is obviously "long town"

Are we speaking another language? C'mon, this isn't obvious at all.

> but Matravers is a very strange non-English sounding name, and indeed according to Wikipedia it's from French

Duh? Was "vers" not a major clue?

...what kind of language education did you receive? I was taught english, french, and latin. Were you taught german or dutch by any chance?