The Durham Account Rolls Vocabulary as Evidence of Trade Relations in Late Medieval England

Abstract

Words are testimonies to the kinds of historical interactions that took place between the speakers of English and many other languages spoken far beyond Britain’s continental neighbours. This article considers the process of lexical conversion from proper names (more specifically, place-names) to common names, as well as the use of descriptive adjectives or nouns denoting the geographical area from which commodities were exported present in the Durham Account Rolls (DAR). All these lexical items give important insights into the trade relations (direct or otherwise) between regions within and beyond Europe, including the Low Countries, France, the former Ottoman Empire, and the Baltic countries. The aim of this article is to offer a lexical analysis and a historical overview of the main commodities that were imported into the monastic community under the auspices of Durham Cathedral, by discussing the implications in the choice of vernacular lexical items over Medieval Latin equivalents in the multilingual environment that characterises the DAR in the broader context of late medieval England.