SCIENCE.-SUPPLEMENT. 



FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1886. 



HISTORY AND POETRY IN GEOGRAPHI- 

 CAL NA3IES. 



At a meeting of the Scottish geographical so- 

 ciety held the 23d of July, Professor Miklejohn 

 read a paper on the above subject. Professor 

 Miklejohn first reminded his hearers of the 

 poverty-stricken treatment of geography now in 

 vogue in our schools, and after pointing out how 

 geography, if taught intelligently, might be made 

 fresher and of more interest, he treated the special 

 question of his paper as follows : — 



Is there any possible source of interest in the 

 mere names which geography presents to us with 

 such u'ritating profuseness ? Do the names them- 

 selves constitute one of the tentacles that may 

 catch the attention and entangle the interest of an 

 awakening mind ? Will some knowledge of what 

 names really are and mean throw light upon 

 geography, and will geography tlirow light upon 

 them ? For, in any school subject, it is clearly 

 the educational duty of the teacher to employ 

 every possible source of interest, provided this 

 does not compel him to wander from the subject 

 itself. I think we shall find, after a very short 

 inquiry, that there lies in the names alone a most 

 fruitful and legitimate source of interest, and one 

 that lends additional attractions to the study both 

 of geogi'aphy and history. As things are at 

 present, geographical names are treated as finaU- 

 ties, behind which you cannot go, — as what the 

 old school of philosophers used to call ' ultimate 

 facts,' inquiry into and analysis of which are 

 entirely useless. 



Let us see. There was in the beginning of the 

 seventh century a prince of Norfchumbria in this 

 island, who was very successful in his campaigns, 

 and who pushed his frontier line as far north as 

 the river Forth. He found there a high rock (a 

 hiU-fort or dun), and to it he gave the name of 

 Dunedin. Later on, the growing city took the 

 Teutonic name of a fortified place (burg or 

 borough), and was henceforth known to the world 

 as Edwinburgh or Edinburgh. Let us contrast 

 this with a borough in the south, — with Canter- 

 bury. The name Canterbury contains within 

 itself a whole history of England written small. 

 First of all, there is the Celtic prefix cant, which 

 seems to be the southern form of the Gaelic ceann 

 (a head or point), — names which we find in Can- 



more, Cantire, Kinross, and many others. The t 

 is an inorganic addition, put there for a rest, as in 

 the Worcestershire dent for glen. The er looks 

 like a quite meaningless suffix to cant. But 

 it is far from being only that. It is the pared- 

 down form of an important word, — of the old 

 Anglo-Saxon or Old-EngUsh genitive plural wara. 

 The full form of Canterbury, then, is, Canta- 

 ivarabyrig, or 'the borough of the men of Kent.' 

 The flattening ot Kant into Kent may be compared 

 with that of banJc into beiich ; of Pall Mall into 

 pell-mell; and of many other doublets. The 

 lighter and easier ending in y points to the fact 

 that the southern Teuton got rid of his gutturals 

 at an earlier date than the northern Teuton did ; 

 and this fact is recorded in the ending gh, which 

 was no doubt sounded in the throat — boroug/i — 

 up to a comparatively late date in Scotland. 



I was traveUing in Staffordshire the other day. 

 The name Stafford has probably a meaning ; 

 but it does not present itself at once to the reader. 

 The train ran along a clear shallow stream, which 

 flowed through gi-een meadows, — a stream called 

 the Sow (a name probably the same as that of the 

 Save, which runs into the Danube), and the train 

 came to a station on the river, called Stamford. 

 Here there was a set of stones, placed at regular 

 distances for crossing the river. The next station 

 was Stafford, — the ford where there were no 

 stones, but a staff was required for crossing. 



There is a little country in the north of Europe 

 — much cut down of late years by the growing 

 encroachments of Germany — which we call Den- 

 mark. This name looks as final and as mean- 

 ingless as any ordinary surname we happen to 

 know. But the word mark is the name for the 

 germ — the family unit — of Teutonic civiliza- 

 tion ; and, if we were to follow out its history in 

 Germany and in this country, we should be able 

 to read in it the origin and the rise of local free- 

 dom and of municipal liberties. Denmark is the 

 mark or march-land, or district of the Danes, as 

 Brandenmark is the mark of the Brand enburgers, 

 and Finmark of the Finns. We have the same 

 word softened in Mercia, the land which marched 

 with all the other kingdoms of Saxon England, 

 and in Murcia, the march -land between the 

 Moorish kingdom of Granada and the other king- 

 doms of Christian Spain. 



These are but a few stray instances of the light 

 that may be thrown upon geographical names by 

 a very slight examination and a little inquuy. 



