The name Blisworth has had many variations in the past.

We find in " The Place Names of Northamptonshire " the following forms : In Domesday Book (1086) Blidesworde, and in later versions of the name from other records Bliswurda (1162), Bliseworthe (1166), Blideswurda (1184), Blieswurth (1199), Blitheworth (1200), Blicheworth (1215), Blidesworth (1216), Blethesworthe (1220), Blidewurd (1220), Bliheswurth (1242), Blecchesworth (1284), Blysworth (1317), Bleseworth (1337), Blayseweurthe (1348), Bluseworthe (1362), Bleseworth (1388), Blyseworthe (1400), Blisworth (1428), Blissworth (1791).

Domesday (1086) is the earliest date for a document mentioning our village by name, as Blidesworde, though it seems increasingly likely that Romans (50 - 410AD) settled here as, probably, did the  Romano-British (400 - 700AD) before the influx of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings whom we suspect created the name.  

The usual interpretation of the 1066 name, for example as stated by the "Place Names Society" at Nottingham University, is that it was the name of a settlement belonging to Blide or Blida. This is because the -s- suggests possession.  Unfortunately there is a too willing a tendency to take this path in interpretation which should apply only in cases where the name ie. in this case Blida (or Blithe, see below) definitely appears in some other document - well, apparently it has not turned up in one yet!

Perhaps there has been insufficient attention paid to the fact that during the period of the Danelaw, ie. at a pre-Norman time, this village was within its confines.  Rothersthorpe is only 3 miles distant and has an unquestionably Danes' name. At a half-mile distance to the east of the village we have Thorpe Wood (both a wood and farm in the early 18th century) - thorpe being an Old Norse (ie. Danes') name for hamlet.

Note first that the -d- in the Domesday name is served by the phonetic p that is pronounced as either a -d- or a -th- or any soft blend between the two. Now we can resort to Ekwall's Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, 1964 Ed., and take note of all the given ramifications. The first part of the compound name may be Blip or Blipe (pronounced blid or blith) from the discussion on Bledisloe, bleap (pronounced bleath and meaning timid or sluggish) from Blaston. Blidworth (Notts) is also attributed to Blipe. Then there is any of the above as a personal name. There are also variations of Blyth in the British Isles (often east-coast rivers) meaning gentle or merry (as in 'babbling brook' ?) that seem unlikely to have stemmed from anyone's name.

From Orcadian dialect comes blide which is pronounced blyth and that means well-being. Our own English word blithe comes from the same source and means happy or carefree.  From Shetlands dialect there is blyde also pronounced blyth and that means glad and, of course, we have a current English word bliss that means just  - well, bliss and, of course blessed as in ".. this place is blessed .."  The OE dictionary indicates its origin as Old English from Germanic (ie. possibly Viking) and this is true for blithe also.

In 1650 the secretaries writing for the Commissioner for Crown Land Sales spelt the village name as Blizworth and were probably recording how the locals pronounced it since a few lived in Blisworth and were called to appear in person and make their purchase claim and, if GF is correct, they probably said "B l i z o r t h".

It is perhaps the time to look again at all the spellings that have been found for our village name. There are so many forms of either blis or bliss, one must feel convinced, surely, that the name has never been much different from that though probably pronounced with -th- as 'Blithesworth' in its earliest form. If one goes with the Nottingham University idea of a person called Blithe then he/she must have been a descendant of Mr. Happy. That is surely a bit far fetched although one might imagine it as a Norman clerk's joking insertion of a generic name.

An intriguing form of the name appears in a 1728 map of the neighbouring parish of Shutlanger to the south - there is a reference to a 'Blithworth Ditch' for a field name recorded by the same map-maker who in 1725 - 1729 never veered from either 'Blisworth' or 'Blysworth' when mapping our parish. Could this be an example of an inherent imprecision in our 'tongue' that perhaps helped generate the range of names down the ages and maybe even popped in the 1086 -s- to which Nottingham University academics have paid attention? 

A final note may be taken from John R. Clark Hall and his Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Here is an extract: for which the letter given by the ð symbol is pronounced as "eth", just like p but this source is a different linguist. This encapsulates most of the above.

blîð blîðe
blîðe I. 'blithe,' joyous, cheerful, pleasant, Æ, AO, CP: gracious, well−disposed, friendly, kind, El:
agreeable, willing: quiet, peaceful, gentle, Ps: (+b. occurs at Guth 161^9). II. adv. Ps.
blîðelic gentle, pleasant, glad. adv.—lîce (Lk). [' blithely']
blîðemôd glad, cheerful: well−wishing, friendly.
blîðheort happy, joyful: gracious.
+blîðian to make glad, RPs 91^4.
blîðnes f. joy, gladness, pleasure, Lcd; AO. [' blitheness']
blîðs bliss

Turning now to the second half of the compound; it comes from OE worp pronounced worth.  This word can mean merely a fence but more commonly an enclosure, eg. within a village.  If it is qualifying a personal name then it means "the homestead of..." otherwise the safest interpretation is that it referred to a fenced enclosure but this could become simply a place or location. As stated above, this phonetic symbol p stands for the 'th' sound in the English tongue. It completely bamboozled George Freeston many years ago since he misunderstood it and claimed the village name was once Blide's Worp (rhyming with warp!!) in his first R&A article listed here (1975).

We are left with the conclusion that our Blisworth name originates as a Viking-named homestead (maybe but more probably not belonging to a Blida or Blithe) or a poetically named place given of  happy, timid, sluggish or gentle (for a stream) and healthy or merry attributes or, amusingly, a place belonging to someone with one of those as a nickname.  Apart from the several rivers there is a plentiful supply of place-names with the same idea: Blythswood district in Glasgow centred on a hill overlooking the original port, being a kernel of prostitution in the 17th and 18th centuries but, in alluding to bliss, the subject of Vikings' thinking was probably on some more religious lines than that. We need to be cautious with Blythswood because of its location which is arguably within the "Breton - Cornish - Welsh - Irish/SW Scotland" regional band for which a (pre-Viking) "Celtic" root is acknowledged for their languages and not the "Germanic" one that applies to all of the above. Phonetically the word "blythe" sounds like the Welsh word for wolf - blaidd (also the Gaelic - bleiddaiad). It is possible the name once implied "Wolf's-wood".

Then there is "The Blithedale Romance" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852) entitled in order to hint at the idyl "Happy Valley" of Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas" (1759) - the reader is encouraged to find some more . . . .

Perhaps our humble brook was once called Blithe as it descended through the original 7th or 8th Century grounds before the concept of a Manor was invented by the Normans.