800 Years of Culture and Heritage

Liverpool - THE NAME The earliest reference to the name was in 1190, since when the great name has been spelled at least 40 different ways: Lle’rpwll, Lerpwl, Lyrpul, Lyrpul, Leverpul, Laverpul, Lyfrpwll, Leverpole, Liverpul, Lyrpul, Lytherpul, Lieurpul … and so on. What does it mean? The arguments over the meaning of the name continue to rage, with each theory’s supporters rubbishing all other theories and casting aspersions on the sanity of anyone believing any theory but theirs. One theory is that the name derives from the Welsh Lyfrpwl, ‘the pool of confluence’, but another is that the creek that ran from the Moss Lake into the Pool was a redbrown colour from the peat (or the clay, depending who you’re listening to), hence ‘liver’. Yet another Links Liverpool with the bit of seaweed, or Laver, in the beak of the Liver Bird. Laver, an edible seaweed, is also known as sea-liverwort. Obvious! But the problem here is that the Liver Bird looking like a cormorant with seaweed in its beak is a poor reinvention of the original Liver Bird, redrawn when the town’s common seal was lost during the siege of 1644. The original Liver Bird is supposed to have been a St John’s Eagle, holding a sprig of broom in its beak. The Latin name for broom is genista, so it was planta genista, the symbol of the Plantagenets, the house of Richard I and King John. There is extra confusion due to the fact that the liver of Liverpool is pronounced to rhyme with giver, whereas the liver of Liver Bird rhymes with fiver. Then there is the district of Litherland, to the north east of the city centre. The name Liverpudlian, is someone who lives in Liverpuddle. The correct name for a denizen of Liverpool is Liverpolitan.

The Mersey - The river, which begins in Cheshire and winds through south Manchester before heading for the sea, is connected to the old kingdom of Mercia which spread over the English Midlands; both names are derived from moere, meaning boundary.

Scouse (the food) - Scouse is a dish that was brought over by German, Norwegian or Dutch sailors; properly called Lobscouse or labskaus, this is a flavoursome but rather sloppy stew or hash. The reasonably authentic German recipe calls for salt beef or corned beef, lots of onions, and potatoes; cooked to rags, the meat and onions are turned into the mashed spuds and eaten with pickled cucumber and a glass of beer. The influence of Lancashire hotpot and Irish stew turned Liverpool Scouse into a cheap stew of mutton, potatoes, onions and whatever other veg came to hand. Eaten with pickled red cabbage or pickled beetroot (and doubtless the glass of beer), this is cheap and cheerful stuff but hardly gourmet nosh. For those who couldn’t afford a bit of mutton, it was blind Scouse - just spuds, onions and veg (and a glass of beer).

Scouse (the accent) - Passionate and expressive, the Liverpool accent is highly distinctive and sounds wholly different from the accents used in the neighbouring regions of Cheshire and rural Lancashire. Scouse is noted for a fast, highly accented manner of speech, with a range of rising and falling tones not typical of most of northern England. Irish influences include the pronunciation of the letter 'h' as 'haitch' and the plural of 'you' as 'youse'. There are also idioms shared with Hiberno-English, such as "I know where you're at" (Standard English: "I know who you are"). Expressions include 'lah' or 'lid', as an abbreviation of lad, used to mean mate or pal, e.g. "alright lid!"