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 Ægean 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 _Belgæ_ 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 ships 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 nobles 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 _viæ stratæ_, 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 Warwickshire, _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 Shire 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.