Part 1

# Geographical etymology: a dictionary of place-names giving their derivations ### By Blackie, Christina

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DICTIONARY OF PLACE-NAMES

_GEOGRAPHICAL ETYMOLOGY_

A DICTIONARY

OF

PLACE-NAMES

GIVING THEIR DERIVATIONS

BY C. BLACKIE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY JOHN STUART BLACKIE

PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

_THIRD EDITION, REVISED_

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1887

PREFACE

The Introduction, by which the present work is ushered into public notice, renders any lengthened Preface on my part quite unnecessary. Yet I wish to say a few words with regard to the design and plan of this little volume.

The subject, though no doubt possessing a peculiar interest to the general reader, and especially to tourists in these travelling days, falls naturally under the head of historical and geographical instruction in schools; and for such use the book is, in the first place, specially intended.

When I was myself one of a class in this city where Geography and History were taught, no information connected with etymology was imparted to us. We learned, with more or less trouble and edification, the names of countries, towns, etc., by rote; but our teacher did not ask us who gave the names to these places, nor were we expected to inquire or to know if there was any connection between their names and their histories. Things are changed now; and I believe the first stimulus to an awakening interest in Geographical Etymology was given by the publication of the Rev. Isaac Taylor’s popular work, _Words and Places_. About ten years ago, I found that the best teachers in the English schools of Edinburgh did ask questions on this subject, and I discovered, at the same time, that a book specially bearing upon it was a desideratum in school literature. As no one better qualified came forward, I was induced to make the attempt; and I hope the following pages, the result of much research and in the face of no small discouragement, may prove useful to teachers, as well as to their pupils.

The Index at the end of the volume, although it contains many names not included in the body of the work, does by no means include all that I have given there. This did not seem necessary, because, the root words being alphabetically arranged, an intelligent teacher or pupil will easily find the key to the explanation of any special name by referring to the head under which it is naturally classed. I must, however, premise that, with regard to names derived from the Celtic languages, the root word is generally placed at the beginning of the name--that is, if it contain more than one syllable. This is the case with such vocables as _pen_, _ben_, _dun_, _lis_, _rath_, _strath_, etc.; _e.g._ Lismore, Benmore, Dungarvan, Strath-Allan. On the other hand, in names derived from the Teutonic or Scandinavian languages, the root word comes last, as will be found with regard to _ton_, _dale_, _burg_, _berg_, _stadt_, _dorf_, _ford_, etc.

The index, therefore, may be expected to include principally such names as, either through corruption or abbreviation, have materially changed their form, such as are formed from the simple root, like Fürth, Ennis, Delft, or such as contain more than one, as in Portrush, it being uncertain under which head I may have placed such names. Along with the root words, called by the Germans _Grundwörter_, I have given a number of defining words (_Bestimmungswörter_)--such adjectives as express variety in colour, form, size, etc.

It is to be regretted that many names have necessarily been omitted from ignorance or uncertainty with regard to their derivation. This is the case, unfortunately, with several well-known and important towns--Glasgow, Berlin, Berne, Madrid, Paisley, etc. With regard to these and many others, I shall be glad to receive reliable information.

And now it only remains for me to express my obligations to the gentlemen who have kindly assisted me in this work, premising that, in the departments which they have revised, the credit of success is due mainly to them; while I reserve to myself any blame which may be deservedly attached to failures or omissions. The Celtic portion of my proof-sheets has been revised by Dr. Skene, the well-known Celtic scholar of this city, and by Dr. Joyce, author of _Irish Names of Places_. I have also to thank the Rev. Isaac Taylor, author of _Words and Places_, for the help and encouragement which he has given me from time to time; and Mr. Paterson, author of the _Magyars_, for valuable information which I received from him regarding the topography of Hungary. I appreciate the assistance given me by these gentlemen the more, that it did not proceed from personal friendship, as I was an entire stranger to all of them. It was the kindness and courtesy of the stronger and more learned to one weaker and less gifted than themselves; and I beg they may receive my grateful thanks, along with the little volume which has been so much their debtor.

C. B.

EDINBURGH, _July 1887_.

INTRODUCTION

Among the branches of human speculation that, in recent times, have walked out of the misty realm of conjecture into the firm land of science, and from the silent chamber of the student into the breezy fields of public life, there are few more interesting than Etymology. For as words are the common counters, or coins rather, with which we mark our points in all the business and all the sport of life, any man whose curiosity has not been blunted by familiarity, will naturally find a pleasure in understanding what the image and superscription on these markers mean; and amongst words there are none that so powerfully stimulate this curiosity as the names of persons and places. About these the intelligent interest of young persons is often prominently manifested; and it is a sad thing when parents or teachers, who should be in a position to gratify this interest, are obliged to waive an eager intelligence aside, and by repeated negations to repel the curiosity which they ought to have encouraged. Geography indeed, a subject full of interest to the young mind, has too often been taught in such a way as neither to delight the imagination with vivid pictures, nor to stimulate inquiry by a frequent reference to the history of names; and this is an evil which, if found to a certain extent in all countries, is particularly rank in Great Britain, where the language of the country is composed of fragments of half a dozen languages, which only the learned understand, and which, to the ear of the many, have no more significance than if they were Hebrew or Coptic. The composite structure of our English speech, in fact, tends to conceal from us the natural organism of language; so that in our case, it requires a special training to make us fully aware of the great truth announced by Horne Tooke, that “in language there is nothing arbitrary.” Nevertheless, the curiosity about the meaning of words, though seldom cherished, is not easily extinguished; and, in this age of locomotion, there are few scraps of information more grateful to the intelligent tourist than those which relate to the significance of topographical names. When, for instance, the London holiday-maker, in his trip to the West Highlands, setting foot in one of Mr. Hutchinson’s steamboats at Oban, on his way to the historic horrors of Glencoe, finds on his larboard side a long, low island, green and treeless, called _Lismore_, he will be pleased, no doubt, at first by simply hearing so euphonious a word in a language that he had been taught to believe was harsh and barbarous, but will be transported into an altogether different region of intelligent delight when he is made to understand that this island is wholly composed of a vein of limestone, found only here in the midst of a wide granitic region skirted with trap; that, by virtue of this limestone, the island, though treeless, is more fertile than the surrounding districts; and that for this reason it has received the Celtic designation of _Liosmor_, or the _great garden_. Connected with this etymology, not only is the topographical name made to speak reasonably to a reasonable being, but it contains in its bosom a geological fact, and an œconomical issue, bound together by a bond of association the most natural and the most permanent. The pleasant nature of the intelligence thus awakened leads us naturally to lament that, except to those who are born in Celtic districts and speak the Celtic language, the significance of so many of our most common topographical names in the most interesting districts is practically lost; and it deserves consideration whether, in our English and classical schools, so much at least of the original speech of the country should not be taught as would enable the intelligent student to know the meaning of the local names, to whose parrot-like repetition he must otherwise be condemned.

Some of the Celtic words habitually used in the designation of places--such as _Ben_, _Glen_, _Strath_, and _Loch_--have been incorporated into the common English tongue; and the addition to this stock is not very large, which would enable an intelligent traveller to hang the points of his picturesque tour on a philological peg that would most materially insure both their distinctness and their permanence. Nay, more; the germ of appreciation thus begotten might lead a sympathetic nature easily into some more serious occupation with the old language of our country; and this might lead to a discovery full of pleasant surprise, that in the domain of words, as of physical growth, the brown moors, when examined, often produce flowers of the most choice beauty with which the flush of the most cultivated gardens cannot compete, and that a venerable branch of the old Indo-European family of languages, generally ignored as rude and unlettered, is rich in a popular poetry, as fervid in passion, and as healthy in hue, as anything that Homer or Hesiod ever sang.

In the realm of etymology, as everybody now knows, before Bopp and Grimm, and other great scholars, laid the sure foundation of comparative philology on the principles of a philosophy, as all true philosophy is, at once inductive and deductive, the license of conjecture played a mad part--a part, it is only too evident, not yet fully played out--and specially raised such a glamour of illusion about topographical etymology, that the theme became disgusting to all sober-minded thinkers, or ludicrous, as the humour might be. We must, therefore, approach this subject with a more than common degree of caution, anxious rather to be instructed in what is solid, than to be amazed with what is ingenious. It shall be our endeavour to proceed step by step in this matter--patiently, as with the knowledge that our foot is on the brink of boggy ground, starting from obvious principles given by the constitution of the human mind, and confirmed by a large induction of unquestioned facts.

The most natural and obvious reason for naming a place so-and-so would be to express the nature of the situation by its most striking features, with the double view of impressing its character on the memory, and conveying to persons who had not seen it an idea of its peculiarity; _i.e._ the most obvious and natural topographical names are such as contain condensed descriptions or rude verbal pictures of the object. Thus the notion of the highest mountain in a district may be broadly conveyed by simply calling it the _big mount_, or, according to the order of words current in the Celtic languages, _mount big_; which is exactly what we find in BENMORE, from _mor_, big, the name of several of the highest mountains in the Highlands of Scotland, specially of one in the south of Perthshire, near Killin, of another in Mull, the highest trap mountain in Scotland, and a third in Assynt. Again, to mark the very prominent feature of mountains elevated considerably above the normal height, that they are covered with snow all the year round, we find LEBANON, in the north of Palestine, named from the Hebrew _leban_, white; MONT BLANC, in Switzerland, in the same way from an old Teutonic word signifying the same thing, which found its way into Italian and the other Romanesque languages, fairly ousting the Latin _albus_; OLYMPUS, from the Greek λάμπομαι, to shine; the SCHNEEKOPPE, in Silesia, from _schnee_, snow, and _koppe_, what we call _kip_ in the Lowland topography of Scotland, _i.e._ a pointed hill, the same radically as the Latin _caput_, the head. In the same fashion one of the modern names of the ancient Mount Hermon is _Jebel-eth-Thelj_, the snowy mountain, just as the Himalayas receive their names from the Sanscrit _haima_ = Greek χεîμα, winter.

The most obvious characteristic of any place, whether mountain or plain or valley, would be its shape and size, its relative situation high or low, behind or in the front, its colour, the kind of rock or soil of which it is composed, the climate which it enjoys, the vegetation in which it abounds, and the animals by which it is frequented. Let us take a few familiar examples of each of these cases; and, if we deal more largely in illustrations from the Scottish Highlands than from other parts of the world, it is for three sufficient reasons--because these regions are annually visited by the greatest number of tourists; because, from the general neglect of the Celtic languages, they stand most in need of interpretation; and because they are most familiar--not from book-knowledge only, but by actual inspection--to the present writer. In the matter of size, the tourist will find at GLENELG (from _sealg_, to hunt), in Inverness-shire, opposite Skye, where there are two well-preserved circular forts, the twin designations of GLENMORE and GLENBEG; that is, Glenbig and Glenlittle--a contrast constantly occurring in the Highlands; the word _beag_, pronounced vulgarly in Argyleshire _peek_, signifying little, evidently the same as μικ in the Greek μικρός. As to relative situation, the root _ard_, in Latin _arduus_, frequently occurs; not, however, to express any very high mountain, but either a bluff fronting the sea, as in ARDNAMORCHUAN (the rise of the great ocean, _cuan_, perhaps from ὼκεανός), or more frequently a slight elevation on the shore of a lake, what they call in England a _rise_, as in ARDLUI, near the head of Loch Lomond, ARDVOIRLICH, and many others. The word _lui_, Gaelic _laogh_--the _gh_ being silent, as in the English _sigh_--signifies a calf or a fawn, and gives name to the lofty mountain which the tourist sees on his right hand as he winds up where the railway is now being constructed from Dalmally to Tyndrum. Another frequent root to mark relative situation is CUL, _behind_, Latin _culus_, French _cul_, a word which gives name to a whole parish in Aberdeenshire, to the famous historical site of Culross, the reputed birthplace of St. Kentigern, and many others. This word means simply _behind the headland_, as does also CULCHENZIE (from _ceann_, the head), at the entrance to Loch Leven and Glencoe, which the tourist looks on with interest, as for two years the summer residence of the noble-minded Celtic evangelist Dr. Norman Macleod. But the most common root, marking relative situation, which the wanderer through Celtic countries encounters is _inver_, meaning below, or the bottom of a stream, of which _aber_ is only a syncopated form, a variation which, small as it appears, has given rise to large controversy and no small shedding of ink among bellicose antiquarians. For it required only a superficial glance to observe that while _Abers_ are scattered freely over Wales, they appear scantly in Scotland, and there with special prevalence only in the east and south-east of the Grampians--as in ABERDEEN, ABERDOUR, ABERLEMNO in Fife, and others. On this the eager genius of archæological discovery, ever ready to poise a pyramid on its apex, forthwith raised the theory, that the district of Scotland where the _Abers_ prevailed had been originally peopled by Celts of the Cymric or Welsh type, while the region of _Invers_ marked out the ancient seats of the pure Caledonian Celts. But this theory, which gave great offence to some fervid Highlanders, so far as it stood on this argument, fell to the ground the moment that some more cool observer put his finger on half a dozen or a whole dozen of Invers, in perfect agreement hobnobbing with the Abers, not far south of Aberdeen; while, on the other hand, a zealous Highland colonel, now departed to a more peaceful sphere, pointed out several Abers straggling far west and north-west into the region of the Caledonian Canal and beyond it. But these slippery points are wisely avoided; and there can be no doubt, on the general principle, that relative situation has everywhere played a prominent part in the terminology of districts. Northumberland and Sutherland, and Cape DEAS or Cape South, in Cantire, are familiar illustrations of this principle of nomenclature. In such cases the name, of course, always indicates by what parties it was imposed; Sutherland, or Southern-land, having received this appellation from the Orkney men, who lived to the north of the Pentland Firth.

The next element that claims mention is Colour. In this domain the most striking contrasts are black and white. In ancient Greece, a common name for rivers was MELAS, or Black-water; one of which, that which flows into the Malaic Gulf, has translated itself into modern Greek as MAURO-NERO, μαûρο in the popular dialect having supplanted the classical μἐλας; and νἐρο, as old, no doubt, as Nereus and the Nereids, having come into its pre-Homeric rights and driven out the usurping ὕδωρ. In the Scottish Highlands, _dubh_, _black_ or _dark_, plays, as might be expected, a great figure in topographical nomenclature; of this let BENMUIC DUBH, or the _mount of the black sow_, familiar to many a Braemar deer-stalker, serve as an example; while CAIRNGORM, the cradle of many a golden-gleaming gem, stands with its dark blue (_gorm_) cap immediately opposite, and recalls to the classical fancy its etymological congeners in the CYANEAN rocks, so famous in early Greek fable. Of the contrasted epithet _white_, LEUCADIA (λευκός), where the poetess Sappho is famed to have made her erotic leap, is a familiar example. In the Highlands, _ban_ (fair), or _geal_ (white), is much less familiar in topographical nomenclature than _dubh_; BUIDHE, on the other hand (yellow), corresponding to the ξανθός of the Greeks, is extremely common, as in LOCHBUIE at the south-east corner of Mull, one of the few remaining scattered links of the possessions of the Macleans, once so mighty and latterly so foolish, in those parts. Among other colours, _glas_ (gray) is very common; so is _dearg_ (red), from the colour of the rock, as in one of those splendid peaks that shoot up behind the slate quarries at the west end of Glencoe. _Breac_, also (spotted or brindled), is by no means uncommon, as in BEN VRACKIE, prominent behind Pitlochrie, in Perthshire, in which word the initial _b_ has been softened into a _v_ by the law of aspiration peculiar to the Celtic languages.

There remain the two points of climate and vegetation, of which a few examples will suffice. In Sicily, the town of SELINUS, whose magnificence remains preserved in indelible traces upon the soil, took its name from the wild parsley, σἐλινον, which grew plentifully on the ground, and which appears on the coins of the city. In the Scottish Highlands, no local name is more common than that which is familiarly known as the designation of one of the most genuine of the old Celtic chiefs, the head of the clan Macpherson--we mean the word CLUNY (Gaelic _cluain_; possibly only a variety of _grün_, green), which signifies simply a green meadow, a vision often very delightful to a pedestrian after a long day’s tramp across brown brae and gray fell in those parts. The abundance of oak in ancient Celtic regions, where it is not so common now, is indicated by the frequency of the termination _darach_ (from which DERRY, in Ireland, is corrupted; Greek δρûς and δόρυ, as in the designation of one of the Campbells in Argyle, AUCHIN-DARROCH, _i.e._ oak-field. The pine, _giubhas_, appears in KINGUSSIE, pine-end, in the midst of that breezy open space which spreads out to the north-west of the Braemar Grampians. In BEITH and AULTBEA (birch-brook) we have _beath_, Latin _betula_, a birch-tree; elm and ash are rare; heather, _fraoch_, especially in the designation of islands, as EILEANFRAOCH, in Loch Awe, and another in the Sound of Kerrera, close by Oban. Of climate we find traces in AUCHNASHEEN (_sian_), on the open blasty road between Dingwall and Janetown, signifying the field of wind and rain; in MEALFOURVONIE, the broad hill of the frosty moor, composed of the three roots _maol_ (broad and bald), _fuar_ (cold), and _mhonaid_ (upland); in BALFOUR (cold town), and in the remarkable mountain in Assynt called CANISP, which appears to be a corruption of _Ceann-uisge_, or Rainy-head.

Lastly, of animals: _madadh_, a fox, appears in LOCHMADDY and ARDMADDY; _coin_, of a dog, in ACHNACHOIN, or Dog’s-field, one of the three bloody spots that mark the butchery of the false Campbell in Glencoe; and, throwing our glance back two thousand years, in CYNOSCEPHALÆ, or the Dog’s-head, in Thessaly, where the sturdy Macedonian power at last bowed in submission before the proud swoop of the Roman eagles; the familiar cow (_baa_, Lat. _bos_) gives its name to that fair loch, which sleeps so quietly in the bosom of beautiful Mull; while the goat, famous also in the sad history of Athenian decline at AIGOSPOTAMI, or the Goat’s-river, gives its name to the steepy heights of ARDGOUR (from _gobhar_, Lat. _caper_), a fragment of the old inheritance of the Macleans, which rise up before the traveller so majestically as he steams northward from Ballachulish to Fort William and Banavie.

In a country composed almost entirely of mountain ridges, with intervening hollows of various kinds, it is only natural that the variety in the scenery, produced by the various slopes and aspects of the elevated ground, should give rise to a descriptive nomenclature of corresponding variety. This is especially remarkable in Gaelic; and the tourist in the Scottish Highlands will not travel far without meeting, in addition to the _Ben_ and _Ard_ already mentioned, the following specific designations:--

_Drum_--a ridge. _Scour_--a jagged ridge or peak. _Cruach_--a conical mountain. _Mam_--a slowly rising hill. _Maol_--a broad, flat, bald mountain. _Monagh_--an upland moor. _Tulloch_ or _Tilly_--a little hill, a knoll. _Tom_--a hillock, a mound. _Tor_--a hillock, a mound. _Bruach_--a steep slope (Scotch brae). _Craig_--crag, cliff. _Cairn_--a heap of stones. _Lairg_--a broad, low slope. _Letter_--the side of a hill near the water. _Croit_--a hump. _Clach_--a stone. _Lech_--a flagstone.

In the Lowlands, _pen_, _law_, _fell_, _bræ_, _hope_, _rise_, _edge_, indicate similar varieties. Among these _pen_, as distinguished from the northern _ben_, evidently points to a Welsh original. _Hope_ is a curious word, which a south-country gentleman once defined to me as “the point of the low land mounting the hill whence the top can be seen.” Of course, if this be true, it means an elevation not very far removed from the level ground, because, as every hill-climber knows, the top of a huge eminence ceases to be visible the moment you get beyond what the Greeks call the “fore-feet” of the mountain.