Place Name
Named after the River Wandle that flows nearby, but the name is comparatively new. It was a back-formation named after the village of Wandsworth, itself named after a Saxon chief named Wændel sometime around the first millennium. The river was first recorded as Hlidaburnan in AD693 meaning the loud river. The name continued under various spellings, Ledeborne sometime around 1230, Ludeburne in 1255 and Lotebourn in 1337. A D Mills in A Dictionary of London Place Names writes: “Wandsworth [was] first recorded in a Latinized form Vandalis riuulus in 1586, and as Vandal or Wandle in 1612.”
