398 ERRATA RECEPTA. 



The individual and family names whieli liave undergone ver- 

 nacularization are innumerable, as may be seen at large in the 

 " Teutonic Name System " of Mr. Ferguson. Names of places are 

 also often thus transformed. 



Bombay is Bona Bahia, Spanish, from haja, a bay. (Compare 

 Bahia, Bayonne, Bay State.) Qroyn and Leghorn are the English 

 sailor's rendering of the Gorunna and Livorno. He makes, in a 

 similar manner, Irish islands and Sick-ladies out of Hyeres-islands 

 and Cyclddes. " The Gulf of Lyons " iigures on our maps, as 

 though there were some reference in the phrase to the city of Lyons, 

 which in French is Lyon. But on the French maps it is " Grolf de 

 Lion," Lion-gulf; reminding us of Bocca Tigris, Bah-el-Mandeb, 

 (" Gate of Tears,") and other names of evil sound. The "wild and 

 stormy steep " which a Dane would call Hehingors, we (or rather 

 our fathers before the time of Shakspeare, thinking probably of their 

 own native Nore,^ have familiarized to our English ears as Elsi-nore. 

 — Into Tartary, " the country of the^Tatars," the r has crept, from 

 a monkish, association of the native word with Tartarus. Such 

 writers as Friar Jordanus instilled the belief that inland desert tracts 

 generally were peopled with demons. — In Guadalquiver, Wady-aU 

 Kelir is forgotten. To Cannibal, simply a Carib, or inhabitant of 

 the Antilles, we have assigned an exclusively anthropophagous sense. 

 — Brennen, a mountain in the Tyrol, is a vernacularization of Pyren^ 

 Pyrn, "high mountain," the Celtic root of Pyrenees as well. The 

 Danejohn of the city of Canterbury is " the promenade of the doU' 

 jon" or old castle-keep. liotton Roiv in Loudon is said to be route 

 au roi, "king's road." — Built on the site of a bi^asinium, apper- 

 taining to an ancient academic Ilall, the mysterious Brazen-nose 

 of Oxford proves to be a vernacularism for brasen-huis, a braserie, 

 or brew-house. — At Aries, in Southern France, is a cemetery com- 

 monly known as the Arlecamp, and popularly understood to express 

 its relation, as God's acre, to Aries. It was anciently, how- 

 ever, written Elycamp, whereby its first designation, viz., Champs 

 JElysees, is betrayed. — Our English term Carfax, to be met with in 

 Oxford and Exeter, is properly quatre-voies, "a place where four 

 ways meet." On the same principle is to be interpreted the proper 

 name Bifax ; but Fairfaxzmeoi,Xi^ Light-haired, and Colfax, Sazel- 

 haired. In debonnaire, i. e. de bonne aire, as well as in the phrase de 

 gentil aire, the aire is a descendant of arvum, equivalent to ager, in 



