[tomalpha]

I grew up in Dorking, but this is the first time (that I can remember...) that I actually read its wikipedia article.

TIL: No one knows why 'Dorking' is called 'Dorking', but there's a English Place Names Society which since the 1920's has researched the origins of town names in England, and is considered [0] to be "the established national body on the subject".

[0] https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/

[kolektiv]

The -ing part of a place name is Saxon, from memory, something like "ingas" meaning "people of". So, People of Dork, literally, and whatever became Dork (a person/place/event) is probably lost to historical memory. We have an awful lot of places with "ing" in them around here, probably due to a lot of C7 Saxon settlement.