A fishy tale: How did the River Trent get its name?

The River Trent is the third longest river in the UK, flowing for 185 miles (298km) from its source in Staffordshire through the East Midlands to the Humber and the North Sea.

Despite its status as a famous watercourse, the origin of its name is murky, with competing theories and contested claims lost in the tide of history.

One possible origin story - a Gallic nod to its abundant flow of different fish - is now the inspiration for the Trent Rivers Trust.

The charity is encouraging people to "fish for the facts" as part of its Trent30 Challenge, which is asking anglers to document their catches via an app over the next 12 months in the hope of finding 30 species rolling in its midst.

"There's a few theories as to why the Trent is called the Trent," said Dr Scott McKenzie, head of rivers and nature-based solutions at the Trent Rivers Trust.

"The one I like the most is the Trent is so-called from the French for 30, which is 'trente'.

"It's thought that number is from the 30 fish species that you could supposedly once find in the River Trent.

"Looking at the species we've got now and considering how much cleaner the water was back then, how much more natural the rivers were, I could easily see there being 30 species picked up."

According to the Canal and River Trust, the idea was proposed by author JW Martin in a 1906 book, and is mentioned by earlier poets.

In truth, the theory is likely apocryphal, but McKenzie said the more mythical tale was the inspiration for the Trent30 campaign, which the charity hoped would build up a better picture of the health of the river and its tributaries.

"We can't be everywhere all at once, and we are very aware that anglers are a wonderful pair of eyes and ears on the riverbanks for us," he said.

"What we want to do is try and tap into that passion.

"These are incredible citizen scientists, they're gathering data without even knowing about it, so we want to be able to utilise that data as much as possible to focus our conservation efforts."

Trent30 will be a "catch and release" project, meaning fish will not be harmed, the charity added.

Marcus Bowles, a Trent Rivers Trust fisheries apprentice and keen angler, said finding 30 different species in a year was a tough challenge and would require different fishing techniques.

"The Trent is one of those top rivers that anglers love to fish," he said.

"It has so much variety. Within Staffordshire it's a lot smaller when you compare it to when you get towards Derby, Nottingham, when it's a lot wider.

"Sometimes you just don't know what you're going to catch."

While the conservation campaign could bring about clear evidence on the River Trent's current health, the origins of the winding waterway's name will remain a mystery.

Prof Jayne Carroll, professor of Early English and name studies at the University of Nottingham, said the names of major rivers tended to be even older than the names of towns and villages, coming long before French was first widely spoken in England after the Norman conquest of 1066.

"The names of the really major watercourses in England are usually Celtic, the language spoken on this island before the Romans arrived," she said.

"Clearly these river names were actually passed on to both Roman conquerors [and] also Anglo-Saxon settlers, and they adopted those Celtic river names and used them themselves."

Carroll added that, as is often the case with British rivers, "Trent" was a historically recurrent name, and there were several other watercourses which bear the same name or a version of it.

"We have the River Trent in Nottinghamshire, but we also have the Tarrant and the Trent Brook in Dorset. There's also at least one Welsh instance - the Trannon in Powys," she said.

It is the River Arun in Sussex, however - historically known as the Tarrant - which may hold the key to the Trent's name.

An early spelling of this river's name - "Trisanton" - is recorded in a 2nd Century text by Ptolemy, a geographer and polymath based in Alexandria in Egypt.

Carroll said Trisanton may have meant "trespasser" or "great wanderer", with another interpretation believing it described the water as "pouring very strongly", with both interpretations thought to point towards the Trent's tendency to flood.

"Place names and river names are usually descriptive," she said.

"Place names are often descriptions of the landscape, [and] river names often give us an indication of how the watercourse actually behaved."

Regardless of the true origin of the name, Carroll said she was supportive of the Trent Rivers Trust's efforts to involve people in its conservation work.

"Anything which starts a conversation about place names is a good thing," she added.

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