Lower Froyle
Lower Froyle, Froylecounty:
coords:
Hampshire
SU7644
Froyle, Lower
otherwise: Froli, 1086; Froila, 1167; Froyle, 1236; Frohill', 1199
FROYLE (UPPER and LOWER)
A difficult name. Ekwall and Gover both toy with the idea that it is Old English 'hill of (the god) 'Freo/Frig'' which (a) is highly speculative; (b) does not account for the universal 'o'; (c) does not really account for the morphology of the name - one might expect some 12th century forms with three syllables; and (d) does not respect the fact that Upper Froyle is at the tip of a rather insignificant ridge, and closer to the river Wey than to the more significant ridge to the north of it. Only a small group of forms like that of 1199 suggest 'hill'. Better perhaps an unrecorded ancestor of Middle English 'frow'='swift' and Old English wiell(e) 'spring, stream'. The name would refer to the Wey, as there is no side stream here. There is plenty of support from other Germanic languages for an hypothetical Old English 'fraw-'.
There is still the question of 'Frobury' farm in Kingsclere, however (1184 'Frolebiri' 1236 'Froillebyr'' 1541 'Frowbery' 1586 'Frolberry'). Ekwall considers this place name to contain that of Froyle (or one identical to it) as its first element. But 'Froyle' shows lots of evidence for a medial '-i-' whilst in 'Frobury' only the form from 1236 has an '-i-'. The two are probably therefore unrelated. They are not really near each other (Froyle SU755429, Frobury SU512595). 'Frobury' may contain hypothetical 'Fr(e)olla' a short form of the name 'Freothulaf (Frithulaf)'.
