The occupying Romans gave their fort in the area the Latin form Pennocrucium. Cameron argues that this, like similar Latinized Celtic names, was passed by the native British directly, orally in its Celtic form, to the later Anglo-Saxon occupiers—not through the medium of Latin. Thus the name Pennocrucium attests the origins of the name Penkridge, but is not its direct origin. In the indigenous Celtic, the name of the village was almost certainly "penn-crug", meaning "the head (or end) of the ridge", or "chief hill or mound", and pronounced roughly "penkrik". In very early times of Anglian settlement the inhabitants of the district were known as the Pencersæte. In 958, a charter uses the form "Pencric" for the settlement. This is obviously close to the modern "Penkridge", and both are closer in pronunciation to the Celtic root than to the Latinized form.