Hamoaze

The Hamoaze (; Cornish pronunciation: ) is an estuarine stretch of the English tidal River Tamar, between its confluence with the River Lynher and Plymouth Sound.

Etymology

The name first appears as ryver of Hamose in 1588. The first element is thought to refer to specifically to Ham in the parish of Weston Peverel, now a suburb of Plymouth (whose name in turn came from the Old English word hamm, meaning "water-meadow, land in the bend of a river"). The second element is thought to derive from Old English wāse meaning "mud" (as in "ooze"). Thus the name once meant "mud-banks at Ham". The name originally probably applied only to a creek running past Ham, which perhaps consisted of mud-banks at low tide, north of the present-day Devonport Dockyard. The name later came to be used for the main channel of the estuary into which the creek drained.