ON ERRATA RECEPTA. 229 



formerly bittacle, should be added to our instances of Anglicised 

 French. It ia from either habitacle or hoite (Vaiguille, both terms 

 denoting the receptacle for the compass. Capstan is ISpanish — cabre- 

 stante, goat-rampant. Ketch is Italian, caeeia.'] 



8. Our English changes in German and other proper names are 

 to be considered in a future section. If we may rely upon the 

 theory of Mr. Ferguson, as set forth in his work entitled " The 

 Teutonic Name-System applied to the Family Names of France, 

 England and Germany," the most wonderful misconceptions are in 

 vogue in relation to proper names, owing to their vernacularisatioii 

 in English, French and German. Some of the more striking of 

 these alleged misinterpretations we shall give in the proper place. 

 In the mean time, we notice in passing that we have made Cape 

 Horn out of Cape Hoorn, which has its name, not from its shape or 

 appearance, as might be imagined ; but from Hoorn in Holland, the 

 native place of the navigator Schonten, who first doubled this pro- 

 montory in 1616. The two names, however, are identical in mean" 

 ing ; and promontories or extremities of islands were cornua. Thus 

 Corn-wealas in Britain, and Coruouailles in Brittany both have re- 

 ference to the Wealas or Celtic foreigners, as the later-arrived Teu- 

 tons would speak, inhabiting narrow headlands jutting out into the 

 sea — pens, as they would be termed by the Celtic people themselves. 

 Supposing Kipa<5 (horn) and cairn (visible memorial pile) to be allied 

 in root, Cornubia, the Late Latin appellation of Cornwall, may con« 

 vey the graphic impression of a region of rock-piled masses. Eichard 

 of Cirencester even asserts that its inhabitants were Carn-abii. — The 

 hosch-man of the Cape has become hush-man with us. The country- 

 farmers of the same colony, in their own language boers, with us are 

 now Boors, without, however, the depreciative sense usually attached 

 to the term. Pieter-Both, a mountain in the Mauritius, we in like 

 manner Anglicise into Peter-Botte. Belft we make del/. Prusse, 

 Prussian, we have transformed, in one instance, into spruce. Nay 

 in more than one, for spruce-fir means, I believe, the tree with the 

 bark of which Prussian leather is tanned. — Sclave, i.e. Slavonian, 

 vre, as other nations, have transformed into slave. Previously, the. 

 Serbs, a subdivision of the Sclaves, had furnished servus and serf. 

 Dolopia, on the contrary, would seem to be a national name de- 

 rived from SouAo?. — Swiss, in one department of French terminology, 

 haa come to be a synonym for a Church-beadle. In the phraseology 



