By R. C. Alexander, Esq., M.D. 197 
guage, a monosyllabic comparison, and due originally to the poverty 
of the ancient vocabulary.! The ‘ea’ of ea-land, is/and, must surely 
also be contracted from eah, an eye, and not, as usually given in 
Dictionaries, mean ‘ea,’ running water. The differences of spelling 
may possibly arise from provincial dialect, but I suspect that in 
Anglo-Saxon a g following an /, ¢, or @ gave them all, as in Danish, 
the sound of a long i or y. In Danish jeg and steg are pronounced 
yi and sty: mig, dig, and sig as my, dy, and sy: regn as ryne, &c. 
This awkward way of writing a simple vowel sound most likely 
arose from the northern nations having learnt letters from the 
Italians, who had not the sound of long 7 or y in their own lan- 
guage. Agreeably to this rule ig, eeg, or eg would be merely 
different ways of speaking the same word, and be equally pronounced 
‘eye.’ 
The second syllable of Aig-lea means a low lying pasture in dis- 
1Tt is curious to see the mutual interchange of meaning in the words used for 
eye, egg, and island in the Germanic languages. 
Eye. Egg. Island. 
Ang.-Sax. ee eg eg 
English eye egg _—i-and-ey in Iford, Ramsey, Waln-ey, &c. 
Old Fries. eag, eeg age, ag, ach, oge 
Low Germ. oog aeghe, aughe, oge, oog in Langer-oog, 
Spiiker-oog, &c. 
Dutch ooge ei ei 
Old Saxon of . 
the Heliand 058 &, et 
High Germ. auge ei ei- in eiland. 
Here we see in Anglo-Saxon the same word eg in all the three senses, in Low 
German oog, and in English ey used for the ey and an island, and in High Ger- 
man and Dutch the same word ei for egg and island. Thus we have eg and ei 
in three senses and oog in only two. But the third meaning of the latter we 
find safely embalmed in the Latin word ov-um an egg. This word agreeably 
to the usual change of the northern g to a v or w is identical with the Low Ger- 
man oog, having merely the case-termination wm added to it. Of this change 
of the g to a v or w, we have abundant instances in our own language as com- 
pared with Old Norse and German: e.g. low O.N. lagr; bow O.N. bogr, Germ. 
bogen; gnaw O.N. gnaga, Germ. nagen; plow and dawter from plough and 
daughter. The Greek dv (oon) is the same word as the Latin ovum, allowing for 
the digamma, and case-termination ov forum. The Latin v seems from its 
identity with the vowel wu to have had the sound of a German w, or in some 
degree of our w, but not at all that of our v, and the Greek digamma the same. 
Festus, a critic of the third century, tells us that the Aigean sea was called so 
from the number of islands in it. 
