258 The Battle of Ethandun. 
1449, Mr. Scrope’s touchstone, as far as terminology is concerned, 
may be successfully applied to the identity of this place with the 
site of Alfred’s victory. I could not therefore, (as has been stated 
vol. iv. p. 3800) ridicule the notion that the terminating syllable of 
Ethandun can be used for a down, since it is proved so applicable 
both by natural feature and by ancient orthography to Edington; 
but to say that the Ethandun of Asser is represented by the Ettone 
of Domesday, is in my humble opinion to pass the usual boundary 
of even antiquarian metamorphoses. 
To overcome this difficulty, Mr. Scrope following Dr. Thurnam 
arbitrarily attaches a duplicate termination, and presents us with 
the word Ettan-dun, Ethandun, quoting as an example the case 
of Ashdown. But here the two syllables respond to the Assedune 
of Domesday, and here also in accordance to ordinary custom, is 
the single and distinctive termination. If the battle of Ethandun had 
been fought at Yatton, the final syllable would as I conceive have 
been retained in subsequent documents, and we should have seen 
Yattendun’ (not Yattondun as is suggested) marked on the map of 
Wilts, as it has been noted in that of the county of Berks. 
Mr. Scrope conceives that he has answered my question “whether 
the compound Etton-dun has ever appeared in writing or (perhaps) 
in common parlance ;” because there was once a down included in 
the parish of Yatton, and the country-people (of course) referred 
to Yatton down, to distinguish it from that of the next village; but 
if we were to take this liberty with distinctive local appellations, 
the nomenclature of half the Wiltshire villages would be changed. 
And as I do not find Ettune-dun is a word which has even occur- 
red in writing, or has even been so identified with “common, that 
is general, parlance,” as to be handed down in the shape of a dis- 
1 Dr. Thurnam. 
2 Yattendon appears to be ‘‘the town composed of more than one street, on or 
under adown,” the word Yatten being I presume employed for the plural of 
yate or Ett, as in the case of housen, still used by the peasantry for houses. 
Yattondon, would bear a duplicate termination, and in fact the word does not 
appear in the nomenclature of Berkshire topography. The distinction to which 
I have alluded, is preserved in the Etingdon of Domesday, and in the name of 
Peter de Etyndon, who seems to have held Yattendon in the reign of Henry III. 
Lysons’s Berkshire, p. 445. 
