68 NAMES OF PLACES 



place in our dictionaries perhaps too important a place 

 in our habits as ' whisky.' 



So much for the establishment of the generic term in 

 a district where one river predominates. But in a land 

 abounding with rivers, specific titles become necessary 

 for indicative purposes; and when the language of the 

 inhabitants changes, as in England and most of Scotland 

 Gaelic has been replaced by another speech, such specific 

 titles often remain as the appellatives of different streams. 

 This affords a fine opportunity for your imaginative 

 guesser, and all kinds of fanciful theories are started to 

 account for such names. Take, for instance, ' the Tarf ' 

 a name borne by five rivers in as many counties of 

 Scotland to which may be added a sixth, the Tarth in 

 Peeblesshire, all representing the Gaelic word tarbh 

 (tarriv), a bull. Here is the way clear to a picturesque 

 etymology, which has been given repeatedly in sober 

 print. These streams are explained to have been called 

 ' the bull ' because of their loud roaring. It may be safely 

 assumed that no such flight of imagination would ever be 

 attempted by the natural man. How do the colonists of our 

 own and other nations set about distinguishing between 

 rivers in new lands ? Do they call this one a bull because it 

 roars, or a parrot because it chatters, or a serpent because it 

 hisses ? Not they. They either perpetuate the native name, 

 when they can pronounce it with tolerable ease, as they did 

 for the Mississippi, which means in the Cree dialect ' the 

 great river ' ; or they express the same idea in their own 

 language, as Rio Grande, a name applied of old by Spanish 

 explorers and retained to this day by no less than seven 

 rivers in the New World ; or they call it after the name 

 of its discoverer, or the first settler on its banks, a natural 



