158 The Names of Places in Wiltshire. 



rule is for the most part reversed. Thus what in Welsh and Latin 

 would be called " Coit-mawr " and " Silva-magna/^ in Anglo-Saxon 

 would be " Sel-wood " and in English " grpat-wood.-" When we 

 meet with such a word as Breamore, the name of a hilly portion of the 

 south of WiltSj we can hardly doubt that it was originally from the 

 Celtic, and probably meant "great hill''^ from the Welsh hryn, (Corn. 

 hrea^ a hill, and mawr, great. The termination in the name Oswes- 

 iry looks temptingly like the Welsh " tre " which means a village, 

 but its position in the word would make us look rather for a Teutonic 

 derivation. Such proves to be the case, for like Bishops-<W2<', which 

 is Biscopes- treow, i.e., Bishop's-tree (or cross), Oswes-try means 

 Oswald^s-tree (or cross), and is represented in Welsh by the name 

 Croes-Oswallt.' 



Then further, there are a number of words that we meet with in 

 the composition of local names which are common both to the 

 Celtic and Teutonic class of languages, and it is difficult to assign 

 the priority to either. The word ford, for example, by itself, or in 

 composition, is frequent in all countries and common both to Celtic 

 and Teutonic, though /br^c? in Welsh means a road or passage gene- 

 rally, and not simply one over a stream. Again the well known 

 word wick (the Greek o[ko<! and the Latin victis) appears also 

 as the Celtic ffwic, — thus Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, the seat of 

 th'C original Bishopric of Wessex, was called Dorcicc, i.e., Dwr- 

 givic (=village on the river) . In these cases other considerations, 

 such, for instance, as the prevalence more or less of Celtic or Teu- 

 tonic names in the immediate neighbourhood, must be taken into 

 account before coming to a conclusion. The termination in 'Eex-wick 

 is undoubtedly of the latter class, whilst the prefix in Which-hixty 

 belongs most probably to the former. 



3. The " Names of Places " which we propose to deal with, and 

 which illustrate the earliest period of om* history, may be classed 

 generally under one of three divisions. 



a. — Those which are purely Celtic in their origin. 



Such for example are Chutb, and Coatb, both of which seem forms 



» See "Pedigree of the English People," by Nicholas, p. 459. 



