Stories That Words Tell Us Part 2

Surnames as well as Christian names were often taken from the names of saints. From such a beautiful name as _St. Hugh_ the Normans had _Hugon_, and from this we get the rather commonplace names of _Huggins_, _Hutchins_, _Hutchinson_, and several others. So _St.

Clair_ is still a surname, though often changed into _Sinclair_. St.

Gilbert is responsible for the names _Gibbs_, _Gibbons_, _Gibson_, etc.

Sometimes in Scotland people were given, as Christian names, names meaning _servant_ of Christ, or some saint. The word for servant was _giollo_, or _giolla_. It was in this way that names like _Gilchrist_, _Gilpatrick_, first came to be used. They were at first Christian names, and then came to be pa.s.sed on as surnames. So _Gillespie_ means "servant of the bishop."

Some surnames, though they seem quite English now, show that the first member of the family to bear the name was looked upon as a foreigner.

Such names are _Newman_, _Newcome_, _c.u.mming_ (from _c.u.mma_, "a stranger"). Sometimes the nationality to which the stranger belonged is shown by the name. The ancestors of the people called _Fleming_, for instance, must have come from Flanders, as so many did in the Middle Ages. The _Brabazons_ must have come from Brabant.

Perhaps the most peculiar origin of all belongs to some surnames which seem to have come from oaths or exclamations. The fairly common names _Pardoe_, _Pardie_, etc., come from the older name _Pardieu_, or "By G.o.d," a solemn form of oath. We have, too, the English form in the name _BiG.o.d_. Names like _Rummiley_ come from the old cry of sailors, _Rummylow_, which they used as sailors use "Heave-ho" now.

But many chapters could be written on the history of names. This chapter shows only some of the ways in which we got our Christian names and surnames.

CHAPTER III.

STORIES IN THE NAMES OF PLACES.

The stories which the names of places can tell us are many more in number, and even more wonderful, than the stories in the names of people. Some places have very old names, and others have quite new ones, and the names have been given for all sorts of different reasons. If we take the names of the continents, we find that some of them come from far-off times, and were given by men who knew very little of what the world was like. The names _Europe_ and _Asia_ were given long ago by sailors belonging to the Semitic race (the race to which the Jews belong), who sailed up and down the aegean Sea, and did not venture to leave its waters. All the land which lay to the west they called _Ereb_, which was their word for "sunset," or "west," and the land to the east they called _Acu_, which meant "sunrise," or "east;" and later, when men knew more about these lands, these names, changed a little, remained as the names of the great continents, Europe and Asia.

_Africa_, too, is an old name, though not so old as these. We think of Africa now as a "dark continent," the greater part of which has only lately become known to white men, and with a native population of negroes. But for hundreds of years the north of Africa was one of the most civilized parts of the Roman Empire. Before that time part of it had belonged to the Carthaginians, whom the Romans conquered. _Africa_ was a Carthaginian name, and was first used by the Romans as the name of the district round Carthage, and in time it came to be the name of the whole continent.

_America_ got its name in quite a different way. It was not until the fifteenth century that this great continent was discovered, and then it took its name, not from the brave Spaniard, Christopher Columbus, who first sailed across the "Sea of Darkness" to find it, but from Amerigo Vespucci, the man who first landed on the mainland.

_Australia_ got its name, which means "land of the south," from Portuguese and Spanish sailors, who reached its western coasts early in the sixteenth century. They never went inland, or made any settlements, but in the queer, inaccurate maps which early geographers made, they put down a _Terra Australis_, or "southern land," and later, when Englishmen did at last explore and colonize the continent, they kept this name _Australia_. This Latin name reminds us of the fact that Latin was in the Middle Ages the language used by all scholars in their writings, and names on maps were written in Latin too, and so a great modern continent like Australia came to have an old Latin name.

There is a great deal of history in the names of countries. Take the names of the countries of Europe. _England_ is the land of the _Angles_, and from this we learn that the Angles were the chief people of all the tribes who came over and settled in Britain after the Romans left it. They spread farthest over the land, and gave their name to it; just as the _Franks_, another of these Northern peoples, gave their name to France, and the _Belgae_ gave theirs to _Belgium_.

The older name of _Britain_ did not die out, but it was seldom used.

It has really been used much more in modern times than it ever was in the Middle Ages. It is used especially in poetry or in fine writing, just as _Briton_ is instead of _Englishman_, as in the line--

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves."

The name _Briton_ is now used also to mean Irish, Scotch, and Welsh men--in fact, any British subject. We also speak of _Great Britain_, which means England and Scotland. When the Scottish Parliament was joined to the English in 1702 some name had to be found to describe the new "nation," and this was how the name _Great Britain_ came into use, just as the _United Kingdom_ was the name invented to describe Great Britain and Ireland together when the Irish Parliament too was joined to the English in 1804.

We see how Gaul and Britain, as France and England were called in Roman times, had their names changed after the fall of the Roman Empire; but most of the countries round the Mediterranean Sea kept their old names, just as they kept for the most part their old languages. Italy, Greece, and Spain all kept their old names, although new peoples flocked down into these lands too. But though new peoples came, in all these lands they learned the ways and languages of the older inhabitants, instead of changing everything, as the English did in Britain. And so it was quite natural that they should keep their own names too.

Most of the other countries in Europe took their names from the people who settled there. Germany (the Roman _Germania_) was the part of Europe where most of the tribes of the German race settled down. The divisions of Germany, like Saxony, Bavaria, Frisia, were the parts of Germany where the German tribes known as Saxons, Bavarians, and Frisians settled. The name _Austria_ comes from _Osterreich_, the German for "eastern kingdom." Holland, on the other hand, takes its name from the character of the land. It comes from _holt_, meaning "wood," and _lant_, meaning "land." The little country of Albania is so called from _Alba_, or "white," because of its snowy mountains.

But perhaps the names of the old towns of the old world tell us the best stories of all. The greatest city the world has ever seen was Rome, and many scholars have quarrelled about the meaning of that great name. It seems most likely that it came from an old word meaning "river." It would be quite natural for the people of early Rome to give such a name to their city, for it was a most important fact to them that they had built their city just where it was on the river Tiber.

One of the best places on which a town could be built, especially in early days, was the banks of a river, from which the people could get water, and by which the refuse and rubbish of the town could be carried away. Then, again, one of the chief things which helped Rome to greatness was her position on the river Tiber, far enough from the sea to be safe from the enemy raiders who infested the seas in those early days, and yet near enough to send her s.h.i.+ps out to trade with other lands. Thus it was, probably, that a simple word meaning "river"

came to be used as the name of the world's greatest city.

Others among the great cities of the ancient world were founded in a quite different way. The great conqueror, Alexander the Great, founded cities in every land he conquered, and their names remain even now to keep his memory alive. The city of _Alexandria_, on the north coast of Africa, was, of course, called after Alexander himself, and became after his death more civilized and important than any of the Greek cities which Alexander admired so much, and which he tried to imitate everywhere. Now Alexandria is no longer a centre of learning, but a fairly busy port. Only its name recalls the time when it helped in the great work for which Alexander built it--to spread Greek learning and Greek civilization over Europe and Asia.

Another city which Alexander founded, but which afterwards fell into decay, was _Bucephalia_, which the great conqueror set up in the north of India when he made his wonderful march across the mountains into that continent. It was called after "_Bucephalus_," the favourite horse of Alexander, which had been wounded, and died after the battle.

The town was built over the place where the horse was buried, and though its story is not so interesting as that of Alexandria, as the town so soon fell into decay, still it is worth remembering.

Another of the world's ancient and greatest cities, Constantinople, also took its name from a great ruler. In the days when the Roman Empire was beginning to decay, and new nations from the north began to pour into her lands, the emperor, Constantine the Great, the ruler who made Christianity the religion of the empire, chose a new capital instead of Rome. He loved Eastern magnificence and Eastern ways, and he chose for his new capital the old Greek colony of Byzantium, the beautiful city on the Golden Horn, which Constantine soon made into a new Rome, with churches and theatres and baths, like the old Rome. The new Rome was given a new name. Constantine had turned Byzantium into a new city, and it has ever since been known as _Constantinople_, or the "city of Constantine."

We can nearly always tell from the names of places something of their history. If we think of the names of some of our English towns, we notice that many of them end in the same way. There are several whose names begin or end in _don_, like _London_ itself. Many others end in _caster_ or _chester_, _ham_, _by_, _borough_ or _burgh_.

We may be sure that most of the places whose names begin or end in _don_ were already important places in the time before the Britons were conquered by the Romans. The Britons were divided into tribes, and lived in villages scattered over the land; but each tribe had its little fortress or stronghold, the "dun," as it was called, with walls and ditches round it, in which all the people of the tribe could take shelter if attacked by a strong enemy. And so the name of London takes us back to the time when this greatest city of the modern world, spreading into four counties, and as big as a county itself, with its marvellous buildings, old and new, and its immense traffic, was but a British fort into which scantily-clothed people fled from their huts at the approach of an enemy.

But the British showed themselves wise enough in their choice of places to build their _duns_, which, as in the case of London, often became centres of new towns, which grew larger and larger through Roman times, and on into the Middle Ages and modern times.

The great French fortress town of Verdun, which everybody has heard of because of its wonderful resistance to the German attacks in 1916, is also an old Celtic town with this Celtic ending to its name. It was already an important town when the Romans conquered Gaul, and it has played a notable part in history ever since. Its full name means "the fort on the water," just as _Dundee_ (from _Dun-tatha_) probably meant "the fort on the Tay."

By merely looking at a map of England, any one who knows anything of the Latin language can pick out many names which come from that language, and which must have been given in the days when the Romans had conquered Britain. The ending _caster_ of so many names in the north of England, and _chester_ in the Midlands, _xeter_ in the west of England, and _caer_ in Wales, all come from the same Latin word, _castrum_, which means a military camp or fortified place. So that we might guess, if we did not know, that at Lancaster, Doncaster, Manchester, Winchester, Exeter, and at the old capital of the famous King Arthur, Caerleon, there were some of those Roman camps which were dotted over England in the days when the Romans ruled the land.

Here the Roman officers lived with their wives and families, and the Roman soldiers too, and here they built churches and theatres and baths, such as they were used to in their cities at home in Italy.

Here, too, it was that many of the British n.o.bles learned Roman ways of living and thinking; and from here the Roman priests and monks went out to teach the Britons that the religion of the Druids was false, and instruct them in the Christian religion.

Another common Latin ending or beginning to the names of places was _strat_, _stret_, or _street_, and wherever we find this we may know that through these places ran some of the _viae stratae_, or great Roman roads which the Romans built in all the provinces of their great empire. There are many remains of these Roman roads still to be seen up and down England; but even where no trace remains, the direction of some, at least, of the great roads could be found from the names of the towns which were dotted along them. Among these towns are _Stratford_ in Warwicks.h.i.+re, _Chester-le-Street_ in Durham, _Streatham_, etc.

Then, again, some of the towns with _port_ and _lynne_ as part of their names show us where the Romans had their ports and trading towns.

It is interesting to see the different names which the English gave to the villages in which they dwelt when the Romans had left Britain, and these new tribes had won it for themselves. Nearly all towns ending in _ham_ and _ford_, and _burgh_ or _borough_, date from the first few hundred years after the English won Britain. _Ham_ and _ford_ merely meant "home," or "village." Thus _Buckingham_ was the home of the Bockings, a village in which several families all related to each other, and bearing this name, lived. Of course the name did not change when later the village grew into a town. Buckingham is a very different place now from the little village in which the Bockings settled, each household having its house and yard, but dividing the common meadow and pasture land out between them each year.

_Wallingford_ was the home of the Wallings. Places whose names ended in _ford_ were generally situated where a ford, or means of crossing a river or stream, had to be made. Oxford was in Old English _Oxenford_, or "ford of the oxen."

Towns whose names end in _borough_ are often very old, but not so old as some of those ending in _ham_ and _ford_. There were _burhs_ in the first days of the English Conquest, but generally they were only single fortified houses and not villages. We first hear of the more important _burghs_ or _boroughs_ in the last hundred years or so before the Norman Conquest. _Edinburgh_, which was at first an English town, is a very early example. Its name means "Edwin's borough or town," and it was so called because it was founded by Edwin, who was king of England from 617 to 633.

The special point about boroughs was that they were really free towns.

They had courts of justice of their own, and were free from the Hundred courts, the next court above them being the s.h.i.+re court, ruled over by the sheriff. So we know that most of the towns whose names end in _burgh_ or _borough_ had for their early citizens men who loved freedom, and worked hard to win their own courts of justice.

There are other endings to the names of towns which go back to the days before the Norman Conquest, but which are not really English. If a child were told to pick out on the map of England all the places whose names end in _by_ or _thwaite_, he or she would find that most of them are in the eastern part of England. The reason for this might be guessed, perhaps, by a very thoughtful child. Both _by_ and _thwaite_ are Danish words, and they are found in the eastern parts of England, because it was in those parts that the Danes settled down when the great King Alfred forced them to make peace in the Treaty of Wallingford. After this, of course, the Danes lived in England for many years, settling down, and becoming part of the English people.

Naturally they gave their own names to many villages and towns, and many of these remain to this day to remind us of this fierce race which helped to build up the English nation.

The Normans did not make many changes in the names of places when they won England, and most of our place-names come down to us from Roman and old English times. The places have changed, but the names have not. But though towns and counties have had their names from those times, it is to be noticed that the names of our rivers and hills come down to us from Celtic times. To the Britons, living a more or less wild life, these things were of the greatest importance. There are several rivers in England with the name of _Avon_, and this is an old British name. The rivers _Usk_, _Esk_, and _Ouse_ were all christened by the Britons, and all these names come from a British word meaning "water." Curiously enough, the name _whisky_ comes from the same word.

From all these different ways in which places have got their names we get glimpses of past history, and history helps us to understand the stories that these old names tell us.

CHAPTER IV.

NEW NAMES FOR NEW PLACES.

We have seen in how many different ways many of the old places of this world got their names. Some names go so far back that no one knows what is their meaning, or how they first came to be used. But we know that a great part of the world has only been discovered since the fifteenth century, and that a great part of what was already known has only been colonized in modern times.

With the discovery of the New World and the colonization of the Dark Continent and other far-off lands, a great many new names were invented. We could almost write a history of North or South America from an explanation of their place-names.

In learning the geography of South America we notice the beautiful Spanish names of most of the places. The reason for this is that it was the Spaniards who colonized South America in the sixteenth century. Very little of this continent now belongs to Spain, but in those days Spain was the greatest country in Europe. The proud and brave Spanish adventurers were in those days sailing over the seas and founding colonies, just as the English sailors of Queen Elizabeth soon began to do in North America.