My own preferred explanation is far more prosaic. Well before the Norman invasion, there was some trade with Wales and Ireland from the area, at least at some points in the year, and a common Irish (and Gaelic) term for the sea was ‘Ler’. As late as Bowker’s 1572 conjectural map of Liverpool, the large tidal entrance, before you get to the ‘pool’ inlet that goes inland, is actually named as the ‘Sea Lake’, which is essentially just what it was, an open lake fed by the sea. ‘Lerpul’ or ‘Lerpwl’, two of the earliest spellings we know about, quite literally mean ‘sea lake’, or if you want to interpret what that means to a sailor, ‘tidal harbour’, nothing to do with a town.
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