Belcher. — Note on Latin Place-names. 607 



Art. LXVII. — A Note on Latin Place-names. 



By Henry Belcher, LL.D., 



Eector of the High School, Otago (Boys). 



[Read before the Otago Institute, 12th October, 1886.J 



In Livy, xxi., 19, we read, " turn maxime Sagunto excisa ;" 

 further on, in xxi., 21, we read, " Sagunto capto." The 

 first expression is explained per synesin of " urbe " with 

 Saguntum, and the participle is taken in agreement with it. 

 Livy occasionally introduces urbem, vicum, in apposition to the 

 names of towns, in "um.'" Hence has arisen a certain perplexity 

 as to the gender of Latin place-names ; add to which the in- 

 fluence of Greek place-names, and we have the erroneous 

 statement of our Latin Grammars on this point seemingly 

 justified. But Livy, in using such a sentence as the following 

 (among a host of such instances), ii., 63: " Fusi, in prime 

 proelio hostes, et in urbem Antium, ut turn res erant opu- 

 tentissiinam acti," is telling us that the enemy fled to Antium — 

 a town of very great wealth, as the times were then — and uses 

 the plainest way of saying what he has to tell us. 



In our Latin Grammars, (two books of this year, 1886, are 

 enough to cite,) the statement runs substantially thus : " Names 

 of countries, cities, islands, and trees are feminine." In another 

 Grammar the statement is somewhat guarded : " Most names 

 of cities are feminine." Here is a qualification of the previous 

 statement ; and it is to be hoped that in time the statement will 

 be further attenuated, so as to represent the facts. 



What are the facts? In my copy of Madvig's Grammar 

 (third edition, an old book), p, 28, the author says very little 

 about the subject ; but adds, " of the words in us the names of 

 towns are feminine. These names are all Greek.''' The italics 

 are mine ; and the statement is worth noting, because it 

 indicates the natural order of things : that, in the case of one 

 highly-inflected language passing on names into another highly- 

 inflected language the names bear their gender with them. All 

 these Latinized spellings of Greek place-names only go to 

 show that in Greek the names of towns in os are feminine. 



But in his "Notes on Latin Word-systems," published in 

 1844, this great scholar (who has died since this note was com- 

 piled,) goes further : " Not a single name of a place in Latin, 

 irrespective of the nature of its termination, is of the feminine 

 gender." Notwithstandmg which dogma of the master, com- 

 pilers of Latin Grammars for English boys have gone on 

 reiterating the same misleading "rule" with a sort of hide- 

 bound obstinacy. 



