From place-names to dialect, surnames to slang, the North-East has always been a region apart.

Nick Morrison looks at how we got our distinctive character.

WHEN they wanted a break from the thieving, the Robsons, the Charltons and the Milburns would get the football out and have a bit of a kick-about. Being a high-spirited lot, the game would often degenerate into a free-for-all, usually ending in murder.

But, despite this self-destructive streak, they continued to thrive, and when the time came they moved into more heavily populated areas. As they hadn't lost their aggression and will to win, they attracted a disproportionate number of followers, so keen to ally themselves to the newcomers that they changed their names to those of their new-found leaders.

And so it came to pass that the names of Robson, Charlton and Milburn came to proliferate throughout the North-East. Perhaps it also explains a genetic passion for football, although only the mean-spirited would suggest there was also a predisposition towards violence.

These Border Reivers - who lived lives of raiding and livestock rustling and prized loyalty to their family above all else - exerted an influence on the North-East which can still be seen today, more than 400 years after their heyday in Tudor times. Common Reiver names also included Bell, Dodd, Eliott, Graham and Turnbull, names which are widespread throughout the region.

And the origin of these names is characteristic of North-East surnames in general, according to historian David Simpson, whose research on where the people of the North-East come from has been published in a new book, Northern Roots.

David, who is also a researcher for The Northern Echo, says surnames fall into four broad categories: those derived from an ancestor, such as Thomson, the son of Tom; those from nicknames, such as Heron for people who had skinny legs; those from jobs, such as Smith, Carpenter, and those from place names or locations, such as Burns, for people who lived near a stream. In the North-East, surnames falling into the first and last categories predominate.

'Surnames started to develop in mediaeval times, particularly from the 1300s, and it was largely for administrative purposes, so people could identify who they were talking about, but there is evidence to suggest that surnames developed later in the North of England than in the South," David says.

"The North didn't develop its civilisation quite as quickly as the South, so maybe surnames developed more slowly, but when they did, they probably developed quite rapidly, so people adopted their parents' name or their place of origin, and possibly there weren't as many trades in the North as in the new towns in the South."

As well as surnames, place names in the North developed differently to those in the South. But there is also a clear difference between place names in the north of the region, and those in the south, with County Durham the buffer zone.

"The place names along the Tees Valley and North Yorkshire are quite different to those in Durham and northwards," says David. "For example, there are places around Darlington with names like Aislaby, Killerby, Raby - places that end in 'by' are Viking, usually Danish, but as you go further north these Viking names peter out. Northumberland has the lowest evidence of Viking settlement of any Northern county."

As well as by, meaning a farm or village, common Viking words in place names include dale, gill and thorpe. But from County Durham northwards, place names show the influence of the Anglo-Saxons, who arrived on these shores some 300 years before the Vikings. Here, there is a proliferation of tons and hams, meaning an enclosure and a homestead.

This division is also clearly illustrated in the different words for a stream. To the Vikings it was a beck, still in common use in North Yorkshire, while to the Anglo-Saxons it was a burn.

But there is also a French influence over our place names, although again this is largely through the Vikings. The Norsemen who settled in northern France, gradually becoming known as Normans, exerted their authority over the North following the Norman Conquest in 1066, bringing with them their place names. Dieppedale in Normandy has the same meaning - deep valley - as Deepdale in North Yorkshire, and also gave rise to Deepdale Beck near Barnard Castle.

One Viking called Amundi settled in France, and adopted the French suffix ville for his new home, Amundeville. When the Amundevilles came over to Britain, they settled on land at Coatham, on the outskirts of Darlington, which came to be known as Coatham Mundeville.

The Vikings are also responsible for ket, dialect for sweet in some parts of the North-East, and David has his own idea for how this came about.

"One theory I developed was for the word ket, which has always been described as meaning rubbish, but everybody in County Durham knows it means sweets. It occurred to me that it came from the Viking kjett, which meant discarded flesh. In Yorkshire there used to be kettmongers, who presumably sold dodgy meat," he says.

"I suspect that in County Durham, when kids ate sweets their parents reprimanded them and said 'you don't want to be eating that, that is rubbish'. I can't prove it, but I suspect that it meant something that was bad for them."

Even though the North-East's origins have a myriad of sources, it is still possible to detect an underlying consistency, which marks the region out.

"I hope people will get an idea of the great variety of cultural and ethnic influences that have gone towards making up the population of the North of England, and Britain as a whole, and how we can still find marks of those influences in our place names and our dialect and our surnames," David says.

"There was quite a lot of mixing in the South of England because it is closer to the continent and dealt more with merchants from abroad, but the North, particularly in the early period, was more isolated, and so became more distinctive.

"But these influences are still developing today. We are losing a lot of words, some of which go back to Anglo-Saxon times, but then there are some that are becoming more popular. Gadgie is a gipsy word, meaning any non-gipsy, but that is widely-used today. Our language is evolving all the time."

* Northern Roots: Who we are, where we come from, why we speak the way we do, by David Simpson is published by Business Education Publishers (£7.95) and can be ordered from Business Education Publishers Limited, The Teleport, Doxford International, Sunderland, SR3 3XD. Tel: 0191-525 2410. Add £1.50 for p&p.