The development of the Robin Hood legend and the increase in its popularity over several centuries sometimes came to influence English local nomenclature, associating places with, in particular, the outlaw himself or Little John. This was mainly limited to minor geographical features, such as wayside crosses or distinctive rocks, not settlements, and these features did not always bear those names consistently or permanently. Such names were very numerous by the nineteenth century, and are found in quite significant numbers from the later sixteenth century onwards, although a large proportion of them are first recorded only on maps drawn in the later eighteenth century. They occur in many counties, not just in those most closely associated with the legend, that is, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. The fullest listing of them so far, specifically excluding street, inn and field names, was compiled by Dobson and Taylor and published in the first edition of their book on the outlaw legend in 1976. It was reprinted without any modification or addition in subsequent editions, and made no claims to be comprehensive, providing ‘only a small selection of what seem to us the most important in an enormous field’, with the selection criterion being the appearance of the name in question on the Seventh Series of the One-Inch Ordnance Survey maps. The first appearance of any place-name in a document or on a map is accidental, and it may have existed for some time previously. Only the very earliest can be used to indicate the spread of the legend, and still less can they provide evidence for its origins. Nevertheless, the concentration of the early examples in the areas most associated with Robin Hood is striking. Many more may eventually come to light, especially as more detailed studies of field-names are carried out, although it seems unlikely that they will alter the general pattern of their distribution.

The list includes only four names recorded before 1501, four more before 1601 and 13 more before 1701. Some early place-names were inherently more susceptible to modification by the widespread awareness of the legend than others. In particular, a handful of ‘Robin’ names were altered to ‘Robin Hood’ names subsequently. For example, ‘Robin Hood Cross’ near Bradwell in Derbyshire earlier occurred as the ‘Robin Cross’ in 1319 and still bore that name in 1640.