_Sarum and Barum_ (Vol. ii., p. 21.).--As a conjecture, I would suggest
the derivation of _Sarum_ may have been this. Salisbury was as
frequently written Sarisbury. The contracted form of this was Sap., the
ordinary import of which is the termination of the Latin genitive plural
_rum_. Thus an imperfectly educated clerk would be apt to read _Sarum_
instead of Sarisburia; and the error would pass current, until one
reading was accepted for right as much as the other. In other instances
we adopt the Law Latin or Law French of mediæval times; as the county of
_Oxon_ for Oxfordshire, _Salop_ for Shropshire, &c., and _Durham_ is
generally supposed to be French (_Duresmm_), substituted for the
Anglo-Saxon Dunholm, in Latin _Dunelmum_. I shall perhaps be adding a
circumstance of which few readers will be aware, in remarking that the
Bishops of Durham, down to the present day, take alternately the Latin
and French signatures, _Duresm_ and _Dunelm_.