Words And Places Or Etymological Illustrations Of History Ethnology And Geography

Author : Isaac Taylor
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781330561522
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (615 download)

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Download or read book Words and Places written by Isaac Taylor and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Words and Places: Illustrations of History, Ethnology, and Geography In the lately published collection of Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, Dr. Henry Bradley begins his essay on English place names by remarking that of the many thousand names on the Ordnance Map of England, some, like Newcastle and Blackwater, have an obvious meaning, and some, like Thames and Helvellyn, have not. "It is natural," he continues, "that curiosity with regard to these enigmatical names should be very widely felt, and the writers who have attempted to satisfy this curiosity are innumerable. Unfortunately nearly everything that has been written on the subject is worthless." But he excepts from this condemnation Canon Isaac Taylor's Names and their Histories, a companion volume to the present book. A yet later and yet more cautious scholar may even class these books as fiction, but whether as fiction or not he must applaud it. In all ages place names have been favourite beasts of the chase. They are noble game, and they have given marvellous sport. They continue to do so, and generation after generation they survive to fascinate and to elude us. Take, for example, the name of Icknield Street. It has long been connected with the tribe of the Iceni who held the land round about its north-eastern terminus, and not many years ago Dr. Edwin Guest, in his Origines Celticae, translated the ancient Icenhilde Weg as "the highway (or military way) of the Iceni." Archaeologists sprang up to show that the Iceni had given their name to several places upon its course. Ickleton was supposed to be Icenton; Icklingham was Iceningham; Ickleford was Icenford. But then appeared Professor Haverfield and Dr. Bradley. Professor Haverfield showed that the Icknield Way could not be satisfactorily traced in Norfolk and Suffolk, the country of the Iceni, and that there were places just as probably named after that tribe in Middlesex, Sussex, and Yorkshire. These places, he affirms, owe their names to English personal names like Icel and Icca. Finally he says: "Nor could either the real name Icenhilde, or the supposed names Iceningham and the like, have grown out of the name Iceni. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."