522 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 240. 



these respects no man in the 

 his superior. 



Jonathan G. Tompkins, 



aged 81 years. 

 Jacob Purdy, 77. 

 John Odell,"60. 

 John Boyce, 72. 

 J. Requa, 59. 

 William Paulding, 81. 

 John Requa, 54. 

 Archer Read, 64. 



county of Westchester is 



George Comb, 72. 

 Gilbert Dean, 70. 

 Jonathan Odell, 87. 

 Cornelius Van Tassel, 71. 

 Thomas Boyce, 71. 

 Tunis Lint, 71. 

 Jacobus Dyckman, 68. 

 William Hammond. 

 John Romer." 



F.D. 



The following works furnish much that is in- 

 teresting concerning Major Andre : — 



An Authentic Narrative of the Causes which led 

 to the Death of Major Andre, by Joshua Hett 

 Smith, London, 1808. Printed for Matthews and 

 Leigh, 18. Strand. 



The Plot of Arnold and Sir Henry Clinton 

 against the United States, and against General 

 Washington, Paris, 1816. Printed by Didot the 

 Elder. 



Niles' Weekly Register for 1817, vol. ii. p. 386. 

 Printed at Baltimore. Anon. 



THE TERMINATIONS " -BY AND " -NESS. 



The linguistic origin of these descriptive syl- 

 lables, when found as suffixes to the names of 

 places, is a question of some interest to the anti- 

 quary and ethnologist ; and, as to the former of 

 them, has, on that account, fitly enough been made 

 the subject of occasional discussion in the pages 

 of " IT, & Q." The -by, as your pages evince 

 (Vol. vii., p. 536.), is implicitly relied upon by 

 Mr. Worsaae and his disciples, in support of the 

 Danish theory of that eminent northern scholar ; 

 and that too, as it appears, without any very 

 minute regard to the etymology and meaning of 

 the former syllabic divisions of proper names so 

 characterised. If only the designation of a locality 

 end with -by, evidence sufficient is given, that it 

 owes its paternity specially to the Danes alone, 

 of all the Scandinavian tribes who obtained a per- 

 manent footing on our shores. The same is the 

 case with respect to the termination -ness, and its 

 orthographic varieties. As with the Ashbys, 

 Newbys, and Kirbys of our several counties, so 

 (inter alia) with the Hackness of Yorkshire, the 

 Longness of Man, the Bowness of Westmoreland, 

 and the Foulness of Essex. All have the Danish 

 mark upon them; and all, therefore, possess a 

 Danish original, and bear witness of a Danish 

 location. 



With regard to the -by, I have already, in these 

 pages, taken occasion to suggest a doubt whether, 

 in that particular instance, the Worsaaen theory 

 be not as fallacious as it is dogmatical. And, 

 adopting the same method with the -ness, I think 



it will be evident, on examination of the following 

 list of almost identical forms of the expression, 

 that, as to this point also, no argument can be 

 founded upon it, one way or the other, beyond the 

 fact of its derivation from some of the Scandi- 

 navian tribes who, in the fifth and succeeding 

 centuries, established themselves on our shores : 

 if, indeed, I do not, even with this enlarged ex- 

 tension, assign to the presence of the term in our 

 topography a too restricted application. 



I have a list now before me of 521 places with 

 this suffix, distributed over twenty-five counties. 

 It does not pretend to be complete ; but as it 

 offers a more extended view of the question than 

 in Vol. ix., p. 136., I subjoin the results : 

 Yorkshire - - - - - 173 



Lincolnshire - - - - - 163 



Leicestershire - - - - - 49 



Norfolk - - - - - 22 



Cumberland - ^ - - - 21 



Westmoreland - - - - - 18 



Northamptonshire - - - 1 7 



Lancashire - - - - - 14 



Nottinghamshire - - - - 14 



Suffolk and Derbyshire, 5 each - - - 10 



Durham and Warwickshire, 3 each - 6 



Essex and Isle of Man, 2 each - - - 4 



Cardiganshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Kent, Mon- 

 mouthshire, Northumberland, Pembrokeshire, 

 Salop, and Wiltshire, 1 each - - - 10 



521 



Our termination -ness, then, is the old northern 

 or Icelandic nes, the parent of the Dan. nas, and 

 the Ang.-Sax. nese and nms, signifying " a neck 

 of land, or promontory." From this nes came, 

 naturally enough, the old northern naos or nos, 

 whence the Dan. ncese, the Germ, nase ; the Ang.- 

 Sax. nase, nase, nose ; the Norman-Fr. naz, and 

 Su.-Goth. naese (in Al. and Sansc. nasa, and in 

 Gall, nes) ; the Latin nasus, and Eng. nose, or nase as 

 it is spelt by Gower in his Conf. Am. b. v., " Both 

 at mouth and at nase" Closely akin to the same 

 word, and probably derived from an identical 

 source, is the old northern nef, whence were 

 formed the Vulg.-Isl. nebbi, the Dan. neb, and the 

 Ang.-Sax. nebbe and neb (in Pers. anef in C. 

 Tscherh. ep, in Curd, defin), the beak or bill, the 

 neb or nib of a bird ; and also used of the pro- 

 minent feature of the human face divine, to which 

 the term is applied by Shakspeare and Bacon, as 

 it is occasionally at the present day by the older 

 inhabitants of the Yorkshire dales. 



Thus have we the origin of our nase, -nese, 

 -ness, -nib, -nab, &c, which are found in the com- 

 position of many of our local proper names ; but, 

 after looking over the foregoing paragraph, who 

 can tell whether these forms were transported to 

 our shores in a Saxon, Jutish, Anglic, or Danish 

 bark ? Wm. Matthews. 



Cowgill. 



