Thus there is no clear consensus on the earliest meanings of the name. Recent suggestions include Patrick Sims-Williams's association of the name with Old Irish ferb ('cattle') and Andrew Breeze's case for a meaning 'powerful striker'. But twenty-first-century scholarship has argued that this proposal cannot explain the -b- of Verbeia. Conventional wisdom associates it with a proto-Indo-European root * wer-, again relating to turning or twisting and suggesting a winding river. What this Brittonic name meant is unclear. This much earlier attestation indicates that the Norse name was adapted (possibly via Old English) from a Brittonic name * werbeiā. However, this Old Norse form was probably adapted from an earlier name: a Roman altar found in Ilkley is inscribed 'VERBEIAE SACRUM' ('sacred to Verbeia') and is believed to refer to the River Wharfe (personified as a goddess). The name Wharfe, at least in its present form, derives from the Old Norse hverfi meaning 'a bend, crook, turn', a name implying that the river was winding. It is a public navigation from the weir at Tadcaster to its junction with the Ouse near Cawood and is tidal from Ulleskelf to the Ouse. The Wharfe is 65 miles (104.6 km) long (before it joins the Ouse), making it the 21st longest river in Britain. The section of the river from its source to around Addingham is in Upper Wharfedale and has a very different character to the river downstream.

It then flows into the River Ouse near Cawood. Flowing initially through Langstrothdale, it then passes by, or in some cases through, Kettlewell, Grassington, Bolton Abbey, Addingham, Ilkley, Burley-in-Wharfedale, Otley, Wetherby and Tadcaster. The watercourse first becomes known as the River Wharfe at the confluence of Greenfield Beck and Oughtershaw Beck at Beckermonds. For much of its middle course it is the county boundary between West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. The River Wharfe ( / hw ɔːr f/ WHORF) is a river in Yorkshire, England originating within the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

The striding place gertrude atherton