NODERN FORMS OF ANCIENT PROPER NAMES. 335 
2. The true sound of e is ay, but that this was not its sound in- 
variably, this word Riet? compared with Reate, shews twice over.— 
The same thing can be seen also in the numerous Italian words, in 
which 77 represents the inseparable particle re, denoting repetition, 
&e. Take rifacimento, i riformati, for examples, and di for the fami- 
liar de. The same anomaly appears in Avignon onthe Rhone. The 
ancient name of this celebrated city was the same to all intents and 
purposes—Avenio—where the e must have been pronounced like i, 
that is, like ee. Once more: compare Monte Viso, the point of junc- 
tion of the Maritime and Cottian Alps. Its ancient name was Mons 
Vesulus, where the e, to have begotten the 7, must have possessed 
the English sound. So in Sena Gallica, on the sea-coast of Umbria 
—the e is represented in the modern name Stnigaglia by i, that is ee. 
Similarly the common Italian pronoun of the first person Jo, J, is 
almost literally the Latin Ego, pronounced Anglice. Also mio= 
meus, Dio= Deus, &c. 
Let us turn also for a moment to the Greek jra, the long e. In 
relation to it the anomalies are at first sight very extraordinary.— 
Most continentals call this vowel ayta; and so the recent Greek 
grammars instruct our youth to do. Still, take Messina for example, 
from which the strait between Sicily and the mainland has its name. 
The Attic form of the name is Meconvy. The 2 in the modern name, 
pronounced of course ee, therefore shews, that one, at least, of the 
ancient pronunciations of y was just what we call it in English.— 
Similar examples are numerous : Athens itself—’AOyva.—has for one 
of its modern popular appellations Settines—where i, that is, ee, does 
duty again for 7, On the same principle the modern name of 
Lemnos, Anpvos, is Stalimine.* So Macronisi—hiterally Long Island 
—off the south east coast of Attica—gives again i, that is, ee—for 
the ra of vycos island.t+ 
* As to the forms Settines, Stalimine, for Athens, Lemnos, it may not be uninteresting to 
explain, in passing, that the s prefixed seems to have arisen from ea, preposition of motion. 
Turks and others learning from native sailors the destination of their craft forsuch and such 
a place, erroneously mixed up the sound of the preposition with the local name, incorpora- 
ting also in some instances, the definite article. Thus the island of Cos acquired the extra- 
ordinary name of Stanco ; and Constantinople, in like manner, became Stamboul, or Istam- 
boul—the City—literally “To the City.” This syllable, dou? reminds us of a pronunciation 
of Sebastopol, popularly prevalent during the Crimean war. 
t The learned Theodore, Augustine’s successor in A. D.669, was a native Greek. This will 
help to account for the phenomenon noticed by Hallam on an examination of a certain MS. 
im the British Museum, of the Lord’s Prayer in Greek, written in Anglo-Saxon characters— 
“Tt proved,” he says, “the protunciation of Greek in the eighth century to have been mod- 
