Upbourn

The village of Upbourn was within the realm of Rohan and had a name from the language of the Rohirrim, and so the village in this form cannot have existed before the founding of Rohan. We know, however, that the valley of Harrowdale was inhabited in earlier times, and so conceivably the Men of the Mountains or the Gondorians may have had an older settlement here that predated the coming of the Rohirrim.

'Upbourn' is a modernisation of the original name used by the Rohirrim, equivalent to Old English Upburnan (from burn, a brook or stream). So, literally, 'Upbourn' meant 'up the stream'. 'Up' in this context describes a place relatively near a river's source, and some distance from its mouth. This was certainly the case for Upbourn: once the Snowbourn ran past the village and out of its mountain valley, the river would flow on for many miles across the plains of Rohan before it met the Entwash, far to the east.