NOMENCLATURE. 115 



when we remember the invasions to which Cornwall has been 

 subjected, and the commercial intercourse she had in very ancient 

 times, with foreign nations. Some persons find Phoenician and 

 Hebrew names here; as, for instance, "Marazion," rendered ^i^fer 

 Zion,^ in " Cornwall and its Coasts," by Alphonse Esquiros, who 

 confirms this rendering by his discovery of "Trejewas" (the Fillage 

 of the Jews), and "Bojewan" (tJie Abode of the Jews). The same 

 writer gives " Lostwithiel " as meaning Lost within the hill. Carew 

 renders it Lion's Tail ; and ridiculous as this seems (he was led by 

 the sound of the word in Cornish, as was Esquiros by that in 

 English), lost does mean tail, and withell is given by Borlase as 

 lion. I am inclined however to take the name in connexion with 

 the neighbouring parish of Withiel, and thus to render it the 

 palace, or coiffrt, of Withiel, who, as Whitaker supposes, may have 

 been the first Earl of Cornwall after the Saxons had taken posses- 

 sion of Liskeard. 



Lhuyd held that most of the suffixes to Tre were corruptions 

 of personal names ; and he advised the making a collection of all 

 the Christian names that could be found in the oldest Cornish 

 pedigrees, and supplementing them from the Welsh. Without 

 going quite so far as he, I think many of the suffixes to Tre, Bos, 

 Pol, Lan, Caer, Fen, &c., may have thus originated; just as per- 



* M. Esquiros seems doubtful whether to derive the bitterness from the 

 Hebrew word marah, or from the Latiu amara ; but whatever may be the 

 meaning of the latter part of the name, Maraz is plainly the old Cornish 

 marchaz, (a market) ; the guttural ch being dropped. There is considerable 

 uncertainty as to the latter part ; /ion may be only the plural termination, and 

 so the name may be " markets " ; or the ion may be the remnant of a dimin- 

 utive termination, and so it would be ^^ little market" ; or it may have got 

 this form from mistaking u for n, which would make it " Thursday market" 

 corresponding with " Market Jeio " ; or, lastly, we may take Zion as the 

 latter part of the name, and render " The Market on the Strand," (sian). 

 Isaac Taylor, in his most valuable work on "Words and Places," makes the 

 name Phoenician, and renders it " The hill by the sea." I cannot agree with 

 him in this, nor in his rendering of Brown Willy, which he interprets Bryn- 

 Huel=^^' The tin mine ridge." I would rather make it " The conspicuous hill," 

 from Bron, a breast, protuberance, hill ; and givelas, to see. The Eev. S. 

 Lysons, in his interesting work on " Our British Ancestors," questions 

 whether Bal-dhu and other Bals may not be derived from the Phoenician 

 God, Baal ; he would show some connexion between Bal-dhu and Balli-dagh, 

 the Turkish name for the site of Troy. I prefer the simplest rendering, 

 "Black mine." — Another surmise is that the present name comes from Bal- 

 De«ji=David's Mine ; and in support of this conjecture, reference is made to 

 " Deiostovj," the local pronunciation of Bavidstoiv, the name of a parish in 

 North Cornwall. 



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