Sarum and Barum

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 general…