(Vol. vii., p. 536.)
I would suggest a doubt, whether the suffix _-by_, in the names of places,
affords us any satisfactory evidence, _per se_, of their exclusively Danish
origin. This termination is of no unfrequent occurrence in districts, both
in this country and elsewhere, to which the Danes, _properly so called_,
were either utter strangers, or wherein they at no time established any
permanent footing. The truth is, there seems to be a fallacy in this Danish
theory, in so far as it rests upon the testimony of language; for, upon
investigation, we generally find that the word or phrase adduced in its
support was one recognised, not in any single territory alone, but
throughout the whole of Scandinavia, whose different tribes, amid some
trifling variations of dialect, which can now be scarcely ascertained, were
all of them as readily intelligible to one another as are, at this day, the
inhabitants of two adjoining English counties. If this were so, it appears
that, in the case before us, nothing can be proved from the existence of
the expression, beyond the fact of its _Norse_ origin; and our reasonable
and natural course is, if we would arrive at its true signification, to
refer at once to the parent tongue of the Scandinavian nations, spoken in
common, and during a long-continued period, amid the snows of distant
Iceland, on the mountains of Norway, the plains of Denmark, and in the
forests of Sweden.
This ancient and widely-diffused language was the Icelandic, Norman, or
Doensk tunga,--that in which were written the Eddas and Skalda, the {106}
Njala and Heimskringla. In it we have the suffix _by_, under the forms of
the verbs _ek by_, _ek bio_, or _at bua_, and _ek byggi_ or _byggia_,
manere, habitare, incolere, struere, edificare; also the nouns _bu_
(Ang.-Sax. _by_, Dan. _bo_, _by_), domus, habitaculum; and _bui_, incola,
colonus, vicinus; closely assimilated expressions all of them, in which the
roots are found of our English words _bide_, _abide_, _be_, _by_ (denoting
proximity), _build_, _borough_, _bury_ (Edmondsbury), _barrow_, _byre_,
_bower_, _abode_, _&c._ Now, these explanations undoubtedly confirm the
interpretation assigned by MR. E. S. TAYLOR to his terminating syllable;
and it is probable enough that the villages to which he refers received
their titles from the Danes, who, we know, on the subjugation of its former
inhabitants, possessed themselves of the country in which they are
situated. This, however, is a begging the question; for, resting simply on
the evidence of the suffix, it is equally probable that these places
preserved the names assigned to them by their former northern colonists.
But our _by_ or _bua_, Ang.-Sax. _bugan_ and _beon_, and the Germ. (ich)
_bin_ and _bauen_, have all been referred by learned philologists to the
Greek [Greek: phuo], or to [Greek: bioo], or to [Greek: pauo, pauomai]; and
the word has affinities scattered throughout numerous languages (there are
the Camb.-Brit. _bydio_, habitare, and _byw_, vivere, for instance), so
that we are surrounded by difficulties, if we attempt to establish from its
use any such point as that involved in your correspondent's Query.