Minor Notes.
_Names of Places in Normandy and Orkney._--In reading Depping's _History
of the Norman Maritime Expeditions_, my attention was directed to
Appendix IX. vol. ii. p. 339., "Des Noms Topographiques de Normandie
dont l'origine est etrangere." Many of the names given there resemble
those in Orkney. I note a few of them.
Depedal. Deepdale, a secluded valley near Kirkwall; _Dalv_, Icelandic, a
valley.
Auppegard, Eppegard in Normandy; Kongsgarth, Herdmansgarth in Orkney;
Icelandic _Gardr_, a field, an enclosure.
Cape La Hogue, derived by M. Depping from _hougr_, a promontory; Hoxay
in Orkney, _hougs_ and _ay_, an island. _Haugs-eid_, isthmus of the
hillock, is another derivation.
Cherbourg, Dep. p. 331.; Suhm, in a note appended, finds the root in his
tongue, _skiair_, _skeer_; Icelandic _Sker_, a sea-rock, the Orkney
_Skerry_, an islet covered at high water.
Houlmes, near Rouen; the Orkney _Holm_, a small island generally
uninhabited.
Yvetot; Toft common in Orkney.
Bye, a dwelling, is the Orkney Bu or Boo, a pure Icelandic word.
Other instances could be given; and there is nothing remarkable in this
when it is considered that the invaders of Orkney and Normandy were the
same people at the same period, and the better preservation of the Norse
tongue in Orkney is readily to be accounted for. In Normandy the
language of the invaders was lost in the French in a very short space of
time, while the Norse continued the language of Orkney and Zetland
during their subjection to the Norwegian earls for a period of 600
years; and only last year, 1850, it was that an old man in Unst in
Zetland, who could speak Norse, died at the age of eighty-seven years;
and except there be in Foula (Fougla, the fowls' island, called Thule in
the Latin charters of its proprietors) a person living who can speak it,
that old tongue is extinct in Britain.